Of Doctors and Mirrors
by bewareofdragons
Summary: Bones has a streak of really bad Luck - Two dozen times McCoy was hurt, sick or injured.
1. Anaphylaxis

**1\. Anaphylaxis**

**Dr McCoy is having a bad day. The last thing he wants is for Jim to drag him along to a diplomatic dinner.**

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or any of it's characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not for profit.**

**27/3/16 - I recently received a comment saying that my spelling and grammar is appalling. While I will admit that this may be true of my grammar, my spelling is not. I am British and as such, my spelling is strictly british. It not incorrect. Please bear this in mind when reviewing.**

Leonard McCoy was in a bad mood. His morning had started with whoever was in command, _Jim probably_, flying the enterprise through a solar flare. It had supposedly been in the name of science but he suspected it had been more because they just could; Solar flares had been so over studied that McCoy doubted they were going to learn anything new from one solar flare.

Normally, they could do what they wanted and Leonard wouldn't mind. What he _did_ mind, was that they did it at 0700 hours, when he was trying to shave, resulting in a laceration and a broken shaving mirror.

He wasn't a superstitious man at all but he did believe in few universal constants, that always came true. There were two. The first was that if anything could go wrong, it would. This was closely followed by the second, which was that when it did, Jim would always be in the middle of it. McCoy was more upset that the mirror had been his father's than the seven years bad luck the shattered glass on the floor of his bathroom.

The rest of his day had been tedious. It had been filled with routine physicals, paperwork, breaking in the new imbeciles, who were supposedly nurses, that Starfleet had sent him, more paperwork and treating the handful patients that were always inevitable in the weeks that followed shore leave. This was then topped off with a visit from Jim, to remind him of the stupid dinner he was expected to attend planet side, 'All the senior officers are going, Bones.'

'_Dammit, Jim_.' He had thirty crewman physicals to document. Whichever paper pushing bureaucrat had decided that every crewman had to have one done within two weeks of boarding the ship was an idiot. It was fine if everyone on board wasn't new. 'I'm too Busy.'

Jim looked around at the now empty sickbay and raised his eyebrows. He'd clearly been spending too much time with their first officer. 'Let M'Benga handle it.'

Geoffrey M'Benga was a human doctor who'd come on board when the Enterprise had left earth. McCoy had chosen him because he happened to be an expert on Vulcans. While M'Benga was perfectly capable in his own right, he had his own fair share of work to do. Besides, that wasn't the point. 'I can't just drop everything, every time you want to go on an adventure.'

Jim just grinned, 'Come on, Bones. It'll be fun.'

McCoy highly doubted that. He had yet to go to a diplomatic dinner that he would describe as fun. There was always too much ass-kissing and watching of P's and Q's for them to actually be fun. Jim paused and turned back him.

'You know that you'll have to beam down there later anyway,' McCoy didn't like where this was going. 'When I eat something I shouldn't because you're not there to tell me not to.'

Dammit, the kid had him there; that was how he found himself beaming down to the planet surface two hours later, much to his dismay. Someone had to be there to save Jim from his own damn stupidity.

The dinner, as far as diplomatic dinners went, wasn't turning out too bad. The food was actually quite nice, so he didn't have to lie about that and pretend to eat, in order to not to offend their hosts. For once, they made it to dessert without a diplomatic incident or Jim needing medical attention.

Across the table, Jim was in his element, chatting with the Farr Ambassador. On McCoy's left, a Farr engineer and Scotty had been engrossed in conversation the entire meal. Most of the words they used went straight over his head. Then there was Uhura and the Ambassador's wife, on his right, who McCoy hadn't heard speak a single word of standard all night. So with nobody to talk to and Jim behaving himself, McCoy kept his head down, ate his food and counted down the hours until they could return back to the ship.

McCoy cleared his throat, trying to ease an itch at the back of his throat. That only made it worse. It felt like something was stuck there but he couldn't think what that could be. He coughed.

'Something go down the wrong way Bones?' Jim asked.

Before he could swallow, McCoy coughed again, suddenly dizzy. Something wasn't right. The air was thick and he couldn't get enough oxygen in. It was like sucking through a straw. He could hear Jim talking to him but he was too busy running a self diagnostic in his head.

_Dizziness, difficulty breathing...swelling..._

His eyes fell on the food in front of him. Just like that, all the stars lined up. _Anaphylaxis._

_Dammit_. He was in serious trouble.

'Jim...' McCoy wheezed, his hand going to his throat as he choked, unable to breath.

_Epinephrine. He needed Epinephrine._

The contents of his Med-kit went everywhere as he frantically searched for what he knew was in there. He never went anywhere without it. _So why the hell couldn't he find it?_

Leonard collapsed onto his back next to the kit. This wasn't right. It was the wrong way round. Jim was the one with the allergies. This was supposed to happen to him, that way he could be the one to patch his friend up. His eyes briefly met Jim's as he fought against his rapidly constricting airway. There were spots dancing in front of his eyes.

'Kirk to Enterprise.' Jim ordered, finishing the search McCoy had been forced to abandon. 'Medical emergency. Transport us to sickbay _now_.' There was a sting and a hiss of the hypo-spray against his neck but it was too late.

Stars had joined the spots now. Stars against the darkness. If he hadn't been so afraid, it might have been beautiful. McCoy was going to pass out.

He was alone in the darkness.

McCoy was choking. He couldn't breath. Someone had jammed something down his throat. He moved a hand to try to pull it out. A hand caught his before it could get there. He panicked, fighting to free his hands. What were they doing? He was coughed around the invasive object.

'Leonard, I need you to calm down and cough on three.' He opened his eyes to meet those of his head nurse. He was a doctor, he knew that instruction; they'd had to intubate him._ '1, 2, 3._'

McCoy coughed as Chapel pulled. The tube was closely followed by the contents of his stomach as the cough turned into gagging. He was thankful for whoever quickly shoved a basin under his chin. Vomit burned it's way up his throat and every heave sent agony shooting through his stomach.

He trembled as he eventually lay back. He was miserable; If he'd had any pride or dignity left, it had now legged it out of the nearest airlock. Someone wrapped a blanket around him.

'How do you feel?' Nurse Chapel asked him, checking his IV

'Jus' Peachy.' He mumbled, gruff from all the abuse his throat had suffered. Just that one word had set his throat on fire. McCoy rolled onto his side, curled up protectively around his stomach. The aforementioned organ lurched in protest. McCoy swallowed, the action making him wince. 'I'm going to throw up again.'

McCoy was barely sitting up before he started heaving again.

Nurse Chapel held the basin steady for the next hour as McCoy's body divested itself of every scrap, of the offending food, that had caused the initial reaction. It an half an hour after that, that she finally put him out of misery and sedated him into oblivion.

Jim was asleep in a chair beside the bed when he woke. He still felt like he'd been run over by a shuttle-pod but it wasn't anything a little more sleep wouldn't fix. He didn't hurt, it was just uncomfortable.

The curtains around the Bio-bed had been left wide open, probably so that they could keep a close eye on him. It was always a compromise between dignity and the ability to monitor patients easily. Clearly the nurses weren't taking any chances.

It provided a small amount of entertainment while he lay there. He found himself wondering what the exchange between Nurse Chapel and a Lieutenant down the other end of sickbay was about. He couldn't hear what she was saying, but he knew that tone. Christine was clearly annoyed.

Nurse Chapman, one of the recent transfers following the Narada incident, walked over.

'Morning.' He croaked.

Nurse Chapman smiled. 'Afternoon actually, sir.'

She checked the Bio-bed monitor briefly before smiling back at him again, 'I'll go get Doctor M'Benga.'

'You nearly scared me to death, Bones.' McCoy hadn't noticed that Jim had woken up.

McCoy shrugged. 'I'll live.'

'So they tell me.' There was the barest glimpse of a smile but that quickly fell and Jim was all serious. 'Is that what it's like for you whenever I eat something I shouldn't?'

McCoy didn't know what to say to that one. Sure, it was terrifying every time that Jim went into anaphylaxis but he was in no doubt that it would have been worse than Jim. He was a doctor, dammit, at least he could do something about it. Jim would have been helpless.

'I promise that I'll listen next time you tell me not to eat something.' Jim looked at him with a steeled fierceness. It was a nice idea but McCoy wouldn't hold him to that one. Eating alien food was like Russian roulette; There was no point in Jim making promises he couldn't keep. McCoy decided that the same could be said about making Jim promise not to make him go on an away mission that he didn't want to go on. He was just grateful that, this time, no one had died.


	2. Amputation

**2\. Amputation**

Bones is surprised that Jim lasted this long before annoying an alien species. He just wishes that Jim could have chosen a better time to do it.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not for profit.**

**Thanks for the reviews!**

The enterprise had made it 19 days out of space dock, before their first hostile encounter with an alien vessel. With Jim's knack for attracting trouble and his unique style of diplomacy, McCoy was surprised that it hadn't happened sooner.

Klingons, Romulans or Fluffy Pink Space Elephants, McCoy hadn't actually been able to find out who was attacking them before he'd had to go into surgery to remove several unidentifiable pieces of metal from an engineers back. Whoever it was, he wanted them to stop firing at his damn ship.

'Dammit, Jim' Leonard shouted at the panel on wall, 'Can't you stop shaking us around for five minutes?' Whatever they were doing up there, the shaking had been getting worse over the last hour. The Deck stabilisation in sickbay was barely doing a thing to help.

'We're a little busy up here, Bones.'

'Yeah, well so I am I.' McCoy smacked the comm in frustration, disconnecting the call. He had a patient to treat.

He readied the scalpel and started the incision.

Another jolt hit the ship. This time, much bigger than the rest. The impact sending the laser scalpel skidding off course.

It took a couple of seconds for the moment to sink in. Like the world was in slow motion, it took a while for the blood to appear. Then the pain registered and everything sped up. Kalaya thrust some gauze at him to stem the bleeding. Bleeding on a patient was _very_ unprofessional.

_Little too late for that, _he thought. Then his brain caught up and McCoy realised the gravity of the situation; he'd just amputated his own finger.

Dammit, just didn't seem to cover it.

McCoy took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. 'Nurse Kalaya, could you please get M'Benga and Nurse Chapel in here?'

Holding his hand above his head to reduce the amount of blood flowing to his hand, he sank down against the wall next to the door, forcing himself not to look. Instead, he focused on his patient's Stats. They weren't perfect but would be fine until M'Benga arrived.

'Doctor McCoy?' He must have zoned out a little. He hadn't noticed Nurse Kalaya returned. He needed to stay calm and to do that, he couldn't acknowledge what had happened. If he did, he was going to throw up of pass out and that would get no one anywhere. Leonard's professionalism was his protection.

'BP's a little low.' He nodded towards the monitor, 'Plain fluids should do for now.' Kalaya looked like she was going to argue but thankfully that was the moment when M'Benga and Chapel appeared.

Geoffrey, to his credit, took one look at McCoy on the floor, covered in blood that clearly did not belong to the patient on the table, and started scrubbing in. The words 'Chapel's with me.' had barely left his mouth.

Nurse Chapel tentatively unwrapped the gauze wrapped around his hand, long enough to see the wound was still profusely bleeding before slapping the gauze back on and applying pressure. 'Can you stand?'

McCoy was paled as all the blood rushed to his feet. If Christine hadn't been there to steady him, he probably would have fallen.

'M' fine.' McCoy murmured when Chapel asked him if she needed to get a gurney. 'Just give me a minute.' McCoy waited until the dizziness had abated a little before taking shaky steps out of the OR.

By the time they had reached the nearest empty Biobed, Sweat had broken out across his body and McCoy the dizziness had returned with such a vengeance he couldn't see straight. He was in shock from the blood loss; passing out was a highly probable possibility in his near future.

'Stay with me Leonard.' Christine commanded as his head lolled fuzzily on the pillow. 'Don't you dare pass out on me.'

McCoy swallowed, suddenly nauseous. As a Doctor, he had never been squeamish; it was the shock talking. He was a doctor, a surgeon at that. He _needed_ his hands.

The hypospray at his neck brought him back to attention.

'Dammit, Chris.' McCoy cursed. 'You're supposed to ask me first.'

'I assessed that you were in pain and acted accordingly.' Christine gave him a look that dared him to argue. 'You going to object if I run a bag of B+ too?' They both knew he needed it; Chapel knew her stuff.

Before the Narada Incident, she'd been planning on training to become a Doctor. Unfortunately, afterwards, Starfleet needed her more as a nurse. Maybe after this crisis, Leonard would send a request to Starfleet Medical for permission to train her. It would make Christine happy and would probably go down better than yet another request for a third doctor.

Whoever thought that just two doctors and a handful of nurses was enough to look after the several hundred humanoids residing onboard was an idiot. They'd been lucky that the nurses Starfleet weren't too incompetent and nothing, touch bulkhead, that serious had happened yet.

While the blood transfusion and painkillers cleared McCoy's head, Chapel had unwrapped his finger to inspect it. She held out the dismembered digit for him to take a look. 'It's a clean cut, straight through. No debris. Reattachment should simple. Barring complications, recovery should be nearly complete, if not total.'

McCoy nodded in agreement of her assessment. It was easier to talk and think about it in a detached way. It wasn't _his_ finger they were talking about, just another unidentified patient. 'Go ahead.'

Chapel looked at him. 'Don't you want to wait for Geoff?'

Leonard shook his head. It would be an hour or two before M'Benga was finished and then there would be other patients who would need him more. The longer they waited, the more they risked a chance of complications and an incomplete recovery.

Christine had assisted him with numerous similar surgeries in the hours and days that had followed Nero. She could do this. Besides, he needed to be back on his feet as soon as possible to help out with the influx of casualties. 'I'll talk you through it.'

Finger reattached and another bag of fluids heavier, McCoy now sat with a mountain of paperwork in front of him.

The first time he'd tried to get up and treat people, Chapel had given him a glare that had prevented him from trying. Leonard had been given a McCoy-worthy lecture on being no good to anyone if he passed out on the floor. They'd compromised, if that was the word, considering Christine held all the cards. He could do the paperwork, while Christine treated the patients, if he sat there quietly. This had been accompanied by a threat of sedating him into next week if he even thought about leaving that bed.

After signing off on all the patient charts in sickbay, Leonard had finally managed to persuade Christine to let him have his PADD, but only so he'd get out of her hair. While he was waiting for the osteo-regenerator to finish it's cycles, he had used it to write several letters and memo's.

The first had been a Casualty report to Jim. That remained unsent, awaiting a final update on the remaining casualties who had yet to receive treatment. There had been no deaths and M'Benga was just finishing with the more serious injuries; most of the injuries sustained had been minor. Christine and her nurses had managed to treat nearly all of them themselves with little input for McCoy. It was just further testament that Nurse Chapel would make a brilliant Doctor.

That had been the subject of his second letter. It had been a request to Starfleet Medical asking for permission to, in the absence of a third doctor on board, carry out Christine's training himself.

The last two had both been memo's to Scotty; one was serious and the other, while still equally important, a challenge. He had requested that someone please come and look at the Stability Controls within Sickbay, specifically the Operating rooms and rectify the problem because at present they were not functioning adequately.

McCoy had sent the challenge knowing it would appeal to Scotty's intellect. He'd sent the same memo to Spock, Chekov and anyone else he thought might be interested. With some of the best and brightest minds onboard the ship, there was no shortage of genius so he doubted it would be long before he got a response; Leonard wanted extra security protocols or a way to modify the Laser Scalpels to prevent accidental discharge. He was Doctor Leonard McCoy and he was going to be damned if something like this happened onboard his ship again.

**Notes: **

BP = Blood pressure


	3. Broken Bones

**3\. Broken Bones**

Summary: Bones falls down a rabbit hole.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Thanks for the reviews! I appreciate them. Hope you all keep reading.**

The away team had disappeared without a trace. Six member's of the crew, just gone. Leonard, in a moment of uncharacteristic stupidity, had volunteered for the Search and Rescue. He should have just nominated one of his Junior Medical officers. That had only occurred to him later, when it was far too late to change it.

Jim had stayed on the ship for once. He'd been dragged into a meeting with the Admiral's over subspace communications. It meant McCoy didn't have to worry about him getting himself into trouble.

The party of twelve had beamed down to the planet and Spock had given the command for the search teams to spread out, so they could cover a larger area. McCoy had been teamed up with Lieutenant Michaels, from security. They'd been walking twenty, thirty minutes when Michaels' tricorder had picked something up. He stopped and pointed. 'Over there, towards those trees.'

McCoy trailed along behind Michaels nearly made it to the other side of the clearing. As soon as he had put his foot down, the ground disappeared beneath him and McCoy felt himself falling.

McCoy groaned and opened his eyes. From the way the dust was still hanging around in the air, he couldn't have been out long. The hole where the rood had given way gave little light, poorly illuminating his surroundings. He was in a tunnel running so close to the surface it had just collapsed when McCoy had stepped on the soil above.

Unable to find his medical tricorder without moving, McCoy ran a self diagnostic. Everything _hurt _but patient was breathing, so definitely alive. Internal bleeding was a possibility. Bruises were certain. It didn't feel like he'd hit his head but he'd blacked out so he couldn't be sure.

Finally, there was his leg; He didn't need a tricorder to tell his lower leg was broken, both Tibia and Fibula. The abnormal angle was enough. It was basic human anatomy; legs just shouldn't bend that way.

It just wasn't his month.

The Doctor pushed himself upright so he could get a better look. McCoy couldn't help crying out. He had tried not to move his leg but even that small movement sent pain stabbing throughout the limb that left him seeing stars.

_First, painkillers._

McCoy looked around for his Medkit. He'd had it on him when he'd fallen, so it must be around there somewhere.

Eventually, he spotted the pack. It was several feet above him, hanging off of a root sticking out halfway up the wall.

_Well, that's just ...great. _

_Dammit._

'Doc, you alive down there?' Lieutenant Michaels called nervously. A shower of dust fell down as he peered over the edge.

'Careful.' McCoy shouted back. 'The grounds not stable.' The last thing he needed was anyone else down here with him, or the whole thing collapsing in on him, then where would he be? Buried alive, that's what. That would be just his luck.

'I'm going to go get help,' Michaels called down again. 'Don't go anywhere.'

_He had a broken leg, Dammit, where was he supposed to go?_

'Over here commander' He heard Michael's call above him. After a minute or two, a face appeared over the edge of the hole.

_Oh Dammit. _Michaels had brought that green-blooded hobgoblin.

Before he could protest, Spock had swung his legs into the opening. McCoy watched as the Spock traversed the tunnel wall with skill. While he'd showered McCoy with buckets full of dirt, the Vulcan reached the bottom without causing the tunnel to cave in. At least he'd had the common sense to rescue the stranded Medkit on his way down.

McCoy proceeded to locate and administer the overdue painkillers from his pack. He sighed at the immediate relief. Now, he just wanted out of the damn hole.

'The mineral deposits within the ground are preventing the transporters from establishing a lock on your signature.' Spock explained. 'We must first move you to a higher altitude but it will take the teams some time to stabilise the opening.'

Didn't the man speak Standard? Why couldn't he have just said, 'We can't beam you up until you're out of this hole?'

'Curious,' Spock was inspecting the tunnel. these tunnels appear to extend for several miles below the planet surface.'

McCoy just hoped he never met the giant rabbit that had made them.

Spock frowned. 'I appear to be detecting several life sign's three hundred miles down this tunnel.'

'Oh.' Was that supposed to be reassuring? 'Oh, good, giant space rabbits'

The furrow in Spock's brow deepened. 'Negative Doctor. There is a high probability that the signs represent the missing away team. I hypothesise that the mineral deposits shielded them from our scanners and blocks any attempts to communicate.'

Spock's eyes darted from the hole above them, to the tunnel disappearing off into the darkness. 'It is possible that the away team has met the same unfortunate circumstances as yourself doctor.'

The drugs were starting to make him drowsy. Another shower of dirt made Leonard look up to see them lowering a stretcher on a rope. _About time._

The stretcher set down next to McCoy with a small flurry of dust. Spock went to pick up McCoy but the doctor shook his head. 'Splint the leg first.'

Spock broke off a root sticking out of the tunnel wall. It was slightly curved but would work alongside a roll of bandages from the Medkit. Spock aligned the root alongside McCoy's deformed lower leg and started to wrap. Even with the painkillers on board, the slight movements were sending sparks of pain up his leg. McCoy couldn't suppress himself from crying out. He saw Spock hesitate.

'No, Keep going.' Leonard gasped, biting his lip to fight the pain.

'Doctor, I do not wish to cause you further discomfort.'

'Needs doing, Spock.' Without splinting it, his leg would hurt even more when it came time to move him. Their first officer only hesitated for another moment before finishing wrapping the bandage to keep the break in place.

Spock scooped him up with ease, _Damn superior Vulcan strength,_ taking special care to avoid McCoy's injured leg. He settled the doctor into the shallow tray before giving the go to start pulling.

McCoy could only see the cave ceiling above him and the way the stretcher was swirling around in the air was making him dizzy. Closing his eyes seemed like a good idea. He felt so sleepy.

McCoy woke in a familiar environment. His sickbay was much of an improvement on the damp hole he remembered being in last. It just would have been nice not to be a patient once again; he'd been seeing entirely too much of the other side of the fence recently.

He looked down at his leg, encased in the blue glow of an Osteo-regenerator. The sensation was mild. There was no pain. It just tickled a little bit causing McCoy to smile. M'Benga had him on the good stuff.

'Hey Bones!' Jim sauntered over to McCoy's bed. Obviously his meeting with the admiralty had gone well. It was either that or he seemed to be taking entirely too much glee in Leonard's misfortune. 'If you'd wanted to stay in sickbay, you should have just said.'

_You're Welcome_. He thought as Jim stole the apple off of his lunch tray.

While the development of Osteo-regenerators had sped up the treatment of breaks hugely, they were still slow relative to their Dermal counterparts. The big bones still took a couple of days to heal. Leonard was going nowhere any time soon and by the way Jim had made himself comfy in that chair, neither was he.

'The away team?' Leonard hadn't seen them in sickbay, which left three possibilities. They'd either been found with only minor injuries, were still missing or dead.

'Safe and sound.' Jim grinned, kicking his feet up on the end of McCoy's bed. 'You're a hero Bones.'

McCoy was lost, unless there was something he couldn't remember. Maybe he had hit his head after all. 'I fell down a damn hole Jim.'

'Yeah, but if you hadn't, we would have never picked up the team's life signs.'

_Every cloud. _

It was a bit hard to see that silver lining when he was the one who'd come off worst. He'd rather there were no clouds in the first place. 'Next time I volunteer for an away mission, stun me pending a full psych assessment.'

Jim bit into the stolen apple before speaking with his mouth full, 'Now where would be the fun in that?'


	4. Bruised

**4\. Bruised**

Summary: Jim upsets the locals.

**Warning: Contains mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Thank you for keeping reading! This one's a little lighter than the others.**

**Sorry about the previous formatting error. Don't know what happened with that.**

Another planet, another away mission. Once again, Jim had insisted on dragged McCoy along with him. Why he had had to go, McCoy did not know. Jim had argued something about him needing more sunshine. McCoy wanted to call bullshit.

It was a diplomatic mission. Their job was to negotiate the joining of another planet into the federation: The Javvii, a society rich in scientific advances.

The mission should have been simple.

_When was living with Jim ever simple?_

'You just couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you.'

It had been going swimmingly until Jim had flirted with the princess. McCoy would admit that, yes, the girl was pretty but that wasn't an excuse. What Jim had done was a great faux-pas among the Javvii, resulting in the queen taking great offence.

'How was I supposed to know the queen would get jealous?' Jim protested and there, in a nut shell, was the whole irony of their situation. If Jim had just flirted with the queen instead, they wouldn't be in this mess. They would be signing the federation joining papers.

An apple landed smack between his eyes. _That's going to leave a bruise. _Definitely not rotten. Things went soft when they rotted.

McCoy had always been under the impression that the fruit and vegetables were supposed to be rotten. Otherwise, why waste perfectly good food? He had yet to decide which he preferred, the rotten ones or the harder, fresher vegetables. They were both horrible.

A purple tomato splattered on the board above his head, splattering McCoy with it's mushy flesh.

As a doctor, McCoy had always preached that fruit and vegetables were good for you. It had been an ongoing battle between him and the vast majority of the crew. Today though, he had been given insurmountable evidence that vegetables were not good for you. If he never saw another vegetable, it would be too soon.

Eventually the crowd ran out of ammunition and drifted away, giving the away team a brief reprieve. McCoy had little doubt that they would be back.

'Anyway you can get us out of these things Bones?'

'Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a magician!' If Leonard could have escaped, did Jim seriously think he wouldn't have done it already? He sure as hell wouldn't be hanging around here being pelted with rotten refuse.

A piece of slimy, tomato-like fruit was slowly sliding down McCoy's nose.

'Uhura?'

The deathly glare that the Lieutenant launched in Jim's direction was accompanied by a sting of alien words. McCoy didn't understand what she was saying but he understood the tone. Uhura, who had always made sure her appearance was immaculate, was just as filthy as the rest of them.

It was only thanks to her quick talking they were still alive and talking.

The federation needed the Javvii and the Javvii desperately wanted to join the federation. Their punishment had been deemed a necessary, and suitable alternative, to restore the relations between the two people's. It was another reason against their escape; that could cause irreparable damage to the negotiations and likely earn them a reprimand from Starfleet.

They were stuck there.

An entire sun cycle in the stocks.

_Nineteen hours._

'Ready for round two?' Jim's comment made him look up to see that the crowd had built up again. They were weighing the next round of slops in their hands.

McCoy had taken to cursing and insulting Jim with every word he think of in between the deluge of rotten scraps. It wasn't very effective on Jim but made Leonard feel better.

On his right, Uhura had been teaching McCoy some new ones.

The Captain just laughed. McCoy could swear that he was actually enjoying this. Jim never could take anything seriously.

The three of them were a sorry sight. There wasn't anywhere that wasn't covered by bruises. Even his bruises had bruises. He didn't care that Spock would said it was anatomically impossible. After another of those rock-solid apples had hit the doctor square in the eye, McCoy had learnt to duck his head, presenting a much less vulnerable target. He could already feel the black eye forming.

Five hours into their punishment, completely out of insults, McCoy chose a new tactic. He ignored Jim.

'I've got rotten vegetable juice in my mouth.' Jim moaned. 'It's nasty.' True to his resolve, McCoy didn't respond. It served Jim right for not keeping it shut.

Instead, he diverted his annoyance into thinking of all the creative ways he could get Jim back for this one. McCoy couldn't wait until Jim's next physical. Forget hyposprays, there were _needles_ in Jim's future. The biggest ones the doctor could find. He'd replicate them if he had too.

'Come on Bones, you can't ignore me forever.' Jim whined after a whole five minutes of trying to get a response. Jim _hated_ being ignored.

'Come on guys, haven't I suffered enough all ready.'

'Bones, I think I'm allergic to those purple tomatoes.'

That made the doctor hesitate in his resolve but Jim was still talking in full sentences so it obviously wasn't that bad.

Leonard glanced at the two officers sat on a bench on the other side of the square. The Security staff had been spared and allowed to stay, on the condition that they did not touch, speak or interfere with the away team's punishment unless their lives were in immediate life-threatening danger. He'd call them over if Jim started having trouble breathing but until then, the Captain would have to put up with it.

'Seriously Bones, it _itches_.'

_Infant._

McCoy knew what Jim meant though. The whole of his face itched and he couldn't scratch it. It was probably the high acidity of the dried residue irritating their skin. It was uncomfortable but in all likely hood, wouldn't hurt them too badly.

Darkness had fallen several hours ago and the entire town must have been asleep. The square was empty, aside from their security escorts, and had been for some time.

There was a stingy peeling hanging off his ear. No matter how much he shook his head, the peeling stubbornly hung on and refused to budge.

Leonard was miserable. The last time he had looked up, the guys in red had been taking it in turns to nap while the other kept watch. McCoy wished that he had that luxury. He was tired, He was hungry and he was thirsty. He couldn't sleep though; he was too damn uncomfortable. McCoy couldn't remember when his back had started screaming at the agony of being hunched over for so long.

Even Jim had stopped complaining.

They were two thirds of the way through their punishment. Thirteen hours down, only six more to go. Those six hours seemed like an eternity.

After their sentence was up, they had been released from the pillories. It hadn't been before another visit from the locals though. All the town's population had turned up, armed with fresh scraps left over from their breakfast. McCoy had been on the unfortunate end of a bowl of well-aimed porridge which had now proceeded to harden in his hair and inside his ear.

The entire return journey had been conducted in silence. The security guys had spent it as far away from the three senior officers as the small space would allow.

'Welcome back Captain!' Scotty was waiting for them as the shuttle opened, unleashing the stench that had been contained inside. His step back didn't sneak past McCoy.

'Ooh, that is _nasty._' Scotty wrinkled his nose, 'What died in there?'

It was then that the engineer noticed the myriad of bruises covering his face. The three of them were black and blue all over.

Scotty winced, 'Ach, what happened to you laddie?'

Despite having slept an hour or two on the shuttle, McCoy was still tired; it just wasn't the same as a real bunk. He smelt worse than a Klingon latrine and was covered in goodness knows what. His clothes were only fit for incineration. He needed a god-damned shower.

He gave Scotty a poker face that could put Spock to shame. 'Jim did.'

Unfortunately, the effect was spoilt by Jim's shout from inside the shuttle, 'I said I was sorry already!'


	5. Cancer

**5\. Cancer**

Summary: It was supposed to be lucky that they had caught it so early. Lucky would be not having it at all.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not for profit.**

**Thanks for the amazing reviews, they've been so encouraging! Please keep them up! Twice in a day, I'm on a roll - Stay tuned for more.**

Leonard McCoy was busily rearranging the supply cupboard for the package he _knew_ had been in there the other day. The inventory said it should have still been in there too. McCoy coughed.

_Stupid air filters._ They never seemed to do anything about the germs floating around in the recycled air. _That was what they were there for, right? _If anything, they just seemed to make the spread of diseases worse.

The tickle at the back of his throat grew into a coughing fit and he had to reach out for the shelf to keep from doubling over. McCoy straightened up to find Chapel watching him with her hands on her hips.

_Dammit._

He was in for it now; Christine meant business. She caught his arm as he went to walk away.

'It's just the dust.' McCoy protested. 'I've got work to do.'

'It can wait two minutes.' Sickbay had been quiet for an hour or two. If something came up the other nurses could handle it. 'The last thing we need is another epidemic.' Leonard coughed again.

'I'm fine Chris.' He protested.

Chapel glared at him. 'If you are, then you won't mind me taking look.' He knew that look all too well.

Dammit, she wasn't going to budge.

Reluctantly, he let her drag him over to the nearest biobed and wave a Medical Tricorder in his direction. Christine was a force not to be reckoned with; sometimes the quickest way was the path of least resistance, to just let her do whatever she damn wanted.

'Anything?' McCoy asked as the tricorder reached the end of it's scan.

To her credit, Christine kept her face straight but her hesitation was enough. She'd found something and it wasn't good. 'I'm going to get M'Benga to take a look.'

'What is it?'

'I'm sure it's nothing.' Christine shook her head. 'I just want a second opinion to make sure.'

After watching her walk away, McCoy had nothing to do but lay there, twiddling his thumbs waiting. Maybe it was nothing, but then why wouldn't she show him? He looked around for the tricorder, only to find she'd taken it with her. Leonard briefly though about getting up to find another one but he didn't want to be gone when Nurse Chapel returned. While he would never admit it, Christine scared him; she would make a good CMO someday. He'd been given the go-ahead from Starfleet Medical, just last week, to start training her as a physician.

It wasn't long before Christine returned with McCoy's colleague, armed with a second tricorder. To rule out a system error, a small part in the back of his brain told him. It did little to put him at ease; They clearly weren't taking any chances.

Leonard found himself fidgeting impatiently as he waited for M'Benga to complete his scan. He hadn't realised that he'd been doing it until Geoff raised an eyebrow. _My god man, I'm worse than Jim._

The tricorder stopped. McCoy waited. M'Benga remained silent.

'That bad, huh?' He prompted after a moment or two. The suspension was driving Leonard up the wall and Geoff had yet to say anything.

'Pulmonary adenocarcinoma.'

The words were like a sledge hammer.

_Lung Cancer._

Who got cancer in this day and age?

He felt fine. It was just a cough.

Sure, he'd been tired lately, but that could have been all the work he'd had on his schedule lately. Sickbay had been inundated the last two weeks with a particularly virulent illness that had swept it's way through two thirds of the crew. The nurses had been particularly badly hit, leading the department to be so short staffed, Chapel had recruited any crew member she could get her hands on, medical training or not.

Leonard had burned the candle at both ends for days before isolating the cause: an illicit supply of Derrian chocolate that had been making its rounds on the black market. Symptoms had included explosive diarrhoea and projectile vomiting. Needless to say, it hadn't been pretty. They were still trying to get the smell out of Sickbay. All the disinfectant in the universe didn't seem to be helping. The stench seemed to be permanently burned into the medical teams' nostrils.

'I'd like to get you into surgery as soon as possible.'

'Today.' McCoy said quietly. He'd only find ways to put it off otherwise. It was better to do it now, before he could run.

'Sure?' Leonard nodded, he knew all the literature off by heart. 'I'll notify the captain and start making arrangements.' He'd obviously taken the other doctor by surprise; it wasn't often patients were so eager but they had nothing to gain by waiting another day. Today was as good day as any.

'Do me a favour though, don't tell the Captain until the surgery's over.' McCoy asked. 'He'll only worry.'

Jim would be furious when he found out but he could deal.

Sometimes as a surgeon, it was easy to forget how it felt to be a patient. Less than an hour after his conversation with Geoff, McCoy was laying on the operating room table with nothing but a flimsy pair of scrub bottoms to protect him from the room's chilly air. Leonard couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so vulnerable.

Nurse Jones, the only male nurse on their team, was assisting. He had his back to the doctor, making sure that everything was prepared. It was only from McCoy's profession that he knew what Jones was doing. To a patient with no medical knowledge, it must have been a terrifying experience. Even McCoy thought it felt daunting.

There was still no _cure_ as such for cancer, even in this day and age. Cancer was a too broader term, a collective name for a group of diseased. That group of diseases had far too many causes for such thing. They could treat it though, provided it was caught early enough.

Modern medicine had a high success rate of recovery. Research had developed better detection methods that allowed it to be detected early on. Treatment options were much more effective too. Several hundred years ago, Cancer had been the biggest cause of death in a developed society; these days, people rarely died of cancer.

M'Benga walked over to him, closely followed by Chapel, both fully scrubbed up in surgical gear. McCoy had managed to persuade the other Doctor to let Christine observe. The surgery would be good for her learning. She'd made the diagnosis, so she should see it through.

'Ready?' His colleague displayed no emotion behind the surgical mask. Sometimes, if you didn't notice the rounded ears, it was hard to believe Geoff wasn't a Vulcan. McCoy nodded.

_Might as well get this over with._

Leonard's chest was on fire. He couldn't _breathe_. It hurt to breathe. McCoy panicked; There was something over his face, stopping him from breathing. Then there was the noise; a cacophony of sound. Numerous frantic beeps and alarms. A low pitched moaning. McCoy panicked even more.

Among all the confusion, McCoy managed to isolate one sound, a calming voice. 'I'm going to give you something to help you relax, Leonard.'

_Christine._ He realised as something stung his neck, accompanied by a reassuring numbness that quickly spread through his body. _Hypospray._

That thing over his mouth was an oxygen mask. It wasn't stopping him from breathing, it was helping him to breath.

With this realisation, his breathing had started to even out. McCoy opened his eyes but everything was too blurry and he was too disorientated to make sense of what he was seeing. Another moan escaped his mouth and with it, the realisation that he'd been the one making that noise. Bit by bit, he managed to piece together the sounds with their source, making sense out of his confusion. The alarming beeping had been his monitor, warning the nurses of his distress.

He was in sickbay.

McCoy's eyes rolled round the room until he focused on a familiar face. _Jim._

Jim was there next to him. McCoy felt his eyelids dragging. He blinked, fighting to keep them open. He needed to explain.

'Don't fight it, Leonard' Christine chastised, catching his hand before he could pull the mask off. His head lolled across the pillow, briefly catching her face before returning to the Captain.

Jim leant towards him and took his other hand.

'It's okay Bones,' There was no anger in his friend's voice or face, only concern. 'Just sleep.'

McCoy poked at his breakfast halfheartedly. He knew that the nurses were watching and it would be a black mark against release in his chart but he he just didn't find the half-cold food that appetising. Give him a bowl of grits over toast any day.

The previous day, the oxygen mask had been replaced by a cannula under his nose, a promising sign he was on the mend. He'd tried sneaking a look at his chart, only to get caught by Nurse Chapel, who'd then moved it to where he couldn't reach it. Leonard had only wanted to gauge how much longer he was going to be prisoner in his own sickbay.

McCoy heard Jim before he saw him; Christine had pulled the curtains around his bed so that he couldn't see what else came in. He was supposed to be resting, not diagnosing patients, she'd told him. Leonard thought she was trying to kill him with boredom.

Chapman poked her head around the curtain, 'You up for visitor's, boss?'

Jim and Spock filled him in on everything he'd missed over the last three days, from Chekov's accident with the replicator to Scotty's latest hair-brained scheme. McCoy had been so busy listening to Jim's rendition of Sulu's match against Lindsay Field, the deputy head of security, that he didn't notice Geoff come onto shift until the doctor walked over to them.

'You're stats are holding well.' M'Benga commented, reading the chart. 'You're oxygenation's dropping slightly at night, but that's to be expected.'

Jim asked the question that Leonard had been wanting to hear, 'Any chance of him getting out of here soon Doc?'

M'Benga looked up at Leonard and smiled, 'If everything keeps up, I'm going to release you to your quarters at the end of alpha shift. The last thing you need is to catch an infection from being in here. We'll check for any signs of reoccurring growth in five days.'


	6. Chest Infection

**6\. Chest Infection**

Summary: He just had to say it, didn't he.

**Warning: Contains mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not for profit.**

**Please keep up the reviews. Hope you enjoy!**

'The last thing you need is to catch an infection.' M'Benga just had to say it, didn't he; he had to Jinx it, with all of McCoy's luck of late. McCoy had a death grip on the sink as he splashed his face with water.

The ten feet from the bed to the bathroom had left him as weak and shaky as a newborn colt. Everything ached. He scrubbed one hand at his face to remove the crustiness residing around his eyes. Briefly he flipped the hand over to feel his forehead. He couldn't be sure, but Leonard was fairly certain he could add a temperature to that list.

McCoy's vision swam as he stared at himself in the mirror.

One thing that was certain, if he turned up in sickbay looking like that, he'd be a patient

before he could say _Dammit._ McCoy refused to be sick. If he wasn't careful, McCoy was going to beat Jim to the most frequent patient of the year award. That was not something he wanted on his claim to fame; He'd only been release back to duty fully the previous day, following the all clear from his latest Lung scan.

_I'm a doctor, not a patient, dammit._

Leonard stumbled over to the comm and paged Nurse Chapel.

'Can you take care of things for a few hours?' He had to suppress the urge to cough mid-sentence. 'I have a few things I need to take care of before I report.' _Like sleep._ He just needed another hour or two_._

If Christine didn't buy his story, she'd shown no sign of it on the comm. ; it wasn't that unusual for McCoy to ask her to cover so he could work on his various research projects. She would call him if there was anything they couldn't handle.

As he collapsed onto the bed, a fit of coughing racked his body.

_So much for the effectiveness of broad spectrum flu vaccines._

He coughed, hacking up a huge wad of green sputum. He blearily stared, with halfhearted interest, at the gunk now coating his hand for a moment before wiping it on the first shirt he found under his bed.

_Productive cough, brilliant._

McCoy then rolled back over and went to sleep.  
...

When McCoy woke, he felt miserable and if anything, worse. Sleep hadn't done anything to help. He felt like death warmed over.

The door buzzed again and McCoy realised that this was what must have woken him. If he didn't answer, maybe whoever it was would think he wasn't in and go. No such Luck; after the third round of buzzing, the door to his quarters opened anyway. _Ugh, Jim. What was he doing here? _

McCoy lay there in silence, hoping Jim would see he was sleeping and leave. Who was he kidding? He could feel Jim standing at the end of the bed, staring at the bundle of blankets. Each of them was waiting for the other to make the first

Jim's patience wore out first, 'You were supposed to meet me for Lunch.'

_Oh Dammit, he'd forgotten about that. _

_Wait... was it lunch time already?_

McCoy's next thought was interrupted by a bout of coughing. He hastily reached for the shirt he'd abandoned earlier as he brought up more sticky mucus from his lungs. 'Gross bones,'

'G' way, Jim.' Leonard rasped. He wished he'd thought to grab a glass of water before fortifying himself under the covers.

'You look like shit.' Jim stated, seemingly unperturbed, 'Chapel know that you're sick?'

''Course.' McCoy wheezed, catching his breath.

Jim just looked at him. 'Liar.'

The door buzzed. McCoy looked at Jim, 'You didn't?'

_Dammit, He did._

Nurse Chapel walked in and took one look at him.

'Dammit, Leonard!' Christine cursed. It was very unprofessional of her but then, she had learnt form the best. 'Why didn't you say you were sick?'

'S' just the flu.' He mumbled sleepily, ''ll be fine.'

'If you had a perfectly healthy set of lungs.' He could hear Chapel's tricorder whirring. She was mad at him. 'Which you don't. I'm calling for a gurney.'

'No sickbay.' He tried to sound forceful but exhaustion made his voice weak and pathetic; he even sounded sick. No way was he letting them wheel him through the corridors in front of the entire crew. He was their doctor, dammit, he didn't want them to see him like this.

Christine gave an exasperated sigh, closing up the portable scanner. If he'd had his eyes open, McCoy was sure she would have thrown her hands up in the air as she did so. 'Fine, but I'm calling M'Benga.'

He didn't like that idea much either but he was tired. It was too much effort to argue. McCoy just shivered, burrowing further into the blankets. _Damn environmental controls must be busted._

_..._

Leonard drifted in and out between lucidity and unconsciousness over the next few hours. Sometimes when he woke, he was so cold it sent him wrapping the blankets around him as tight as he could, lest any precious warmth escape. Others, he'd kick them as far away as he could, only to have to scramble after them minutes later. Voices and silence, darkness and light, hot and cold.

At some point, he'd ended up in sickbay after all.

He was so cold. McCoy tried to pull the blankets back towards him. Hands met flesh. Someone had stolen his clothes as well as his blanket.

_Must have been that pointy eared bastard. _

McCoy should have known not to trust that Vulcan science officer. His mama always told him you couldn't trust a man when you couldn't see where he kept his undies.

Something cold and wet was placed against his bare skin, making him flinch.

'Please' He squirmed, trying to get away from the burning ice. Hands held him firmly in place so he couldn't escape. A frustrated cry escaped from his lips. ''S freezing.'

He had to get his blanket back from Spock.

'Leonard, you're burning up.' Chapel explained, 'We have to cool you down.'

'Ssstop, dammit.' Leonard pleaded through chattering teeth. His limbs were shivering so badly it hurt. It was bad enough that the green-blooded hobgoblin had stolen his blanket but now his best nurse was torturing him.

'You!' He accused. It all made sense now. 'You're working with him!'

Christine frowned. 'Working with who?'

'That pointy-eared bastard!' Leonard could see it now. 'He stole my god-damned blanket.'

Christine sighed. 'Spock didn't steal your blanket. The fever's making you delusional.'

McCoy's eyelid's were drooping. That last coughing fit had left him exhausted. He had to stay awake, it wasn't safe. They were all in on it, even Jim.

My god man, he was so tired. He just needed to rest. That was right, he needed to conserve his strength. Then he could go after Spock. He could find out then how far this conspiracy went.

First though, he was going to sleep.

...

Last time he was awake, Christine had aerosolised Albuterol into the oxygen to help open his airways. While it had helped at the time, Leonard was now finding it increasingly difficult and painful to breathe.

The beeping monitor wasn't helping. The more he couldn't breathe, the more it beeped. Them more it beeped, the more he panicked. The more he panicked, the more he couldn't breathe. Leonard knew he needed to calm down but it was hard when he could barely get a breathe in sideways between coughs.

There was an elephant sitting on his chest. If he took anything but a shallow breath, it sent pain shooting through his chest and him spiraling into a coughing fit that left him breathless and dizzy. He was drowning in his own fluids.

McCoy coughed, blood splattering the inside of the mask. Stars were swimming in front of his eyes. He was going to pass out because he couldn't get enough oxygen.

'Triox.' Christine showed him the label, barely waiting for him to nod before administering the drug. The relief was almost immediate as oxygen was delivered to his starving cells.

He forced himself to breathe slowly, copying the rise and fall of Christine's chest. It was easier now he was no longer suffocating. _In, out, In, out. _Distantly, the beeping slowed to a quieter rate. McCoy's eyes fluttered shut.

...

The next time he woke, he surprisingly felt much better. The gunk around his eyes suggested that he'd slept for a long time; it _felt_ like he'd been sleeping for a long time.

Leonard started by assessing the usual progress indicators. The nasal cannula had replaced that oxygen mask, which was good. The catheter was not so good. The fact that it was there meant he'd been here, and unconscious, a day or two at least. Finally, the monitor was on it's quietest setting, still on, but quiet. That was also good; The nurses didn't expect him to stop breathing suddenly any time soon.

He shifted a little bit to try and get more comfortable. A sharp pain stabbed into his side.

_Not so good._

Before he could work out what was causing it though, Nurse Chapel had appeared carrying a large tray of hyposprays. Leonard groaned at the number. He was under no doubt that they were all for him.

'Not the flu then.' McCoy mumbled. No way, with that many hyposprays.

'Oh no, you had the flu.' Christine explained. 'But your compromised lungs led you to also contract bacterial pneumonia. That in turn developed into a pleural effusion.'

_Pleural effusion... fluid around the lungs... Chest drain._

That explained the pain in his side. With all the revolution of medicine and science, there was still only one way to remove a large amount of fluid from a human body.

Chapel held up two hyposprays. 'Which one do you want to start with?'

...

Lunch sat abandoned on the table, glaring at him as if he'd offended it. McCoy just wasn't hungry and Jim had already stolen the apple anyway. Maybe he could persuade Scotty to eat the rest when he visited later, that way the nurses wouldn't moan and give him those disapproving looks.

Leonard still felt nauseous but, all things considered, that wasn't surprising. He could have run a pharmacy with all the drugs running around in his blood. Antivirals, antibiotics, painkillers. You named it, it was probably in there. Any number of them could be the culprit, not even considering the diseases themselves.

He'd eat when he felt better; It wasn't like they were going to release him today anyway.

Jim was frowning at something across the room. Whatever Jim was thinking, it looked painful. 'Do you think Nurse Matthews would go on a date with me if I asked her out?'

That made McCoy laugh. It was a little known that Matthews was dating Lieutenant Bjorn Rolvsson, the Norwegian security officer. At six foot two and two hundred pounds of pure muscle, Rolvsson was giant. Captain or not, Jim wouldn't stand a chance if the lieutenant found out he'd even thought of hitting on his girl.

Laughter wasn't the greatest idea and quickly set McCoy off coughing and spluttering.

_Dammit Jim._

Ignoring Jim's protests, McCoy spat into the bowl one of the nurses had left him. As a Doctor, you could tell a lot about a disease by the sputum a patient was producing; Colour, smell, texture, volume and appearance were all clues. As a patient, McCoy was fed up of coughing up gunk; Gunk meant he was still sick. He was bored of gunk, Dammit.


	7. Concussion

**7\. Concussion**

Summary: Bones gets attacked by ninjas.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Just a little one this time. Bones needs a break. I tried to be kind, honest! Please keep reading and reviewing.**

...

There was a Klingon playing power ballads in his skull. McCoy groaned. Actually, make that a whole battalion of Klingons.

'Captain, I believe the Doctor is regaining consciousness.'

The last thing he remembered was being on the Enterprise, but the ground was damp underneath him. Before he could ponder the situation anymore, something pried his eyelids open and a supernova was trying to take residence behind his eyeballs. He tried to swat the annoying light away but all his hand could manage was a feeble twitch. Gross movement was beyond him at that present point in time.

Bones could hear the frown on Spock's face. 'Might I inquire as to what you are doing?'

'I dunno, but Bones always does it to me.'

_Dammit, Jim._

The light was back, insistent on searing the back of his eyeballs. McCoy swallowed. If Jim wasn't careful, McCoy was going to throw up on him. That would serve Jim right.

'It would be wise for you to refrain from your actions, Captain.' Spock said logically. 'You appear to be causing the Doctor some discomfort.' A simple _Stop that, Jim_, would have sufficed but McCoy wasn't going to complain when he heard Jim stomp away with a huff. The burning light went with him.

Wearily, McCoy opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.

_Ugh, certainly not the enterprise._

The world tilted and span alarmingly in technicolor green. That had been a bad idea. He had to close his eyes or he'd have been sick. Leonard had had enough concussion's to know that was the last thing he wanted to do. It would just make his headache worse.

Eventually, he took the plunge and opened his eyes again, slowly this time; he'd learnt his lesson. While waiting for the world to settle, McCoy investigated the back of his head, wincing at the foot ball sized lump he found there. His hand came away sticky with blood. His self-diagnosis, probable concussion. That would earn him an overnight stay for observation at least.

_Dammit, Christine's gonna be pissed. _He thought vaguely; she'd only let Jim kidnap him on the condition that they brought him back in one piece. Jim had claimed Bones needed more fresh air. Christine had reluctantly agreed. Leonard had had no say in the matter. He'd been practically bullied out of his own sickbay.

'What happened?' Focusing on the Jim he thought was actually the Captain. There were three off them.

'Ninjas, Bones' Jim grinned. 'Purple furry ninjas hit you over the head.' Bones looked at Spock for confirmation.

'I cannot comment, Doctor, as I do not know.' Spock replied, 'However the logical explanation is that you slipped and banged your head.'

'I told you,' Jim protested, seemingly offended by their disbelief. 'It was the giant ninja mice.' Seriously, Jim was such an infant sometimes.

Spock wisely chose that moment to change the subject. Arguing with Jim was making his head hurt even more.

'Doctor, do you think you could stand with assistance?'

'I may throw up on you.' McCoy warned, allowing them to hoist him to standing. He groaned as the sudden change in altitude made the dizziness return with a vengeance. Only Spock and Jim's support stopped him from falling. McCoy closed his eyes, determined to assert himself over his stomach which was threatening a rebellion; Throwing up would not be fun.

After a minute or two of just breathing, he tentatively opened his eyes. The world stayed still, _mostly_. He stared at the bush

For a moment, Leonard could swear there was a face staring out of the bush at him but when he blinked and looked again, there was nothing there, just large pink flowers.

He definitely had a concussion; he was seeing things now. The face had been furry and elongated with whiskers, like a giant rodent. It had also been a lovely shade of violet.

Thank you, Jim, for putting ideas in his head.

'Spock to Enterprise, Energize.'

The transporter was the last straw. The bright lights swirling around them hurt his head. Closing his eyes just made the sensation of being transported worse. There was no way he could win this one.

McCoy gagged.

Jim jumped back, 'Gross, Bones!'

_Well, I did warn you._


	8. Crushed

**8\. Crushed**

Summary: Bones gets stuck.

**Warning: Contains mild profanity**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Unfortunately, no doctors were severely hurt, damaged or killed in the writing of this chapter. It was tricky, but Bones needs a break before the next couple of chapters. **

**See, I can be nice to him (kind of)!**

**Hope you like it, please keep reviewing!**

Doctor McCoy was tired. He'd been up all night with a busy gamma shift on call, followed by an equally busy alpha shift. He'd been nearing the end when the call had come through to the Sickbay. By the time McCoy had reached the gym, Sulu's ankle had swollen to the size of a beach ball. He would have bet another double shift on the Lieutenants nose being broken too.

_Training accident, my ass._

The corridor suddenly lurched, taking them by surprise.

'That felt like a hit.' Sulu voicing what McCoy was thinking. Then the alarms started sounding and red lights flashing, closely followed by another violent shudder, this time nearly succeeding in throwing the pair of them to the floor. _Dammit, Jim. Who did you piss off now?_

Sulu looked up at the ceiling as a further three hits followed. 'I should be on the bridge.'

'Don't even think about it Lieutenant.' McCoy warned, tightening his grip on Sulu's waist. No way was he letting Sulu go anywhere but sickbay in this condition. 'Keep on hopping.'

Their progress was slow. Every corner they turned the corridor's had quickly filled with debris and injured crewman. Section 14 had been completely blocked, an out of control fire forcing them to take the long way around.

'I'm just slowing you down.' Sulu protested, 'I can make it to sickbay on my own.'

Who did Sulu think he was trying to kid? Leonard was best friend and primary physician of Jim, who was slipperier than a Romulan eel when it came to anything medical. No, the doctor was going to make sure his patient actually made it to sickbay and didn't sneak off back up to the bridge or worse, pass out in the middle of the corridor during a hostile attack. 'Hop faster.'

A loud creaking made the doctor stop.

McCoy looked up for the source of the noise to see the bulkhead head hanging on by thread. Suddenly, the next impact rocked the ship and the bulkhead started to fall. With all the strength he could muster, the Doctor tried to push Sulu clear. Then the collapsing ceiling knocked him to the ground.

When the dust settled he was, surprisingly, alive, although would probably ache in the morning. Another piece of rubble was propping the bulkhead up, stopping it from completely crushing McCoy. He twisted onto his back so that the pressure on his abdomen was uncomfortable but not painful. He had been lucky, if you could call getting trapped in the first place, that.

He was, however, stuck. _Dammit._

McCoy couldn't go backwards or forwards. Leonard had had barely enough room to twist onto his back. It was unfortunate anatomical fact that neither the pelvis or the ribcage were squishy and would not fit through the gap, no matter how he twisted.

McCoy wiggled his feet, causing the rubble resting lightly on his legs to shift slightly. He stopped, afraid of dislodging something much larger and heavier. It was nice to know he could move them if he wanted to.

The was no sign of his medkit; who knew where that had ended up. Probably buried somewhere with his feet.

Finally, he found himself wondering when maintenance had last washed the floor. He didn't want to think about all the germs that might be growing on it. How many pairs of feet walked over this spot everyday?

At least the ship had stopped shaking. For now.

A groan somewhere above his head reminded him of his patient. 'Report Lieutenant.'

'Just a bit battered and bruised, sir.' Sulu said. 'The other end of the corridor's blocked though.'

McCoy craned his head, trying to get a better look. He'd thrown Sulu forwards when the bulkhead had started coming down. It was unnerving talking to someone when you couldn't see them. Sulu was too far away though and all the doctor got for his efforts was a crick in his neck.

He thought about asking Sulu to see if he could remove the bulkhead, then remembered the Lieutenants ankle. It was doubtful one man could move the bulkhead on his own anyway. 'Can you contact the bridge?'

He heard Sulu drag himself over to the panel and start pressing buttons. The panel was dead; it didn't even bleep. 'Communications are down, Doctor.'

McCoy groaned in frustration. _Of course they were._

He was the CMO, dammit, he needed to be in sickbay, helping treat patients. Not stuck in some godforsaken corridor. With damage this bad, there would undoubtedly be numerous casualties. Sickbay would be swamped.

In all the chaos, it would be a while before anyone came looking for them. They weren't going anywhere anytime soon.

The Doctor was the first to break the awkward silence that had fallen.

'So what happened between you and Lieutenant Commander Field?' McCoy asked. She'd been hovering with concern when Leonard had assessed Sulu in the gym. He never did get a straight answer from either of them.

'I told her that it was Luck that let her win last time.' Sulu sounded almost sheepish. 'She told me that not only could she do it again, but she would do it unarmed.'

McCoy groaned, he could see where this was going. It was another one of those universal truth's that if you challenged a security officer to a fight, they weren't going to back down. 'My god man, you didn't.'

Sulu sighed. Apparently so. 'I did. My arse was spectacularly handed to me, again.'

Stupidity seemed to be contagious recently. Was Leonard the only one left on the ship with any scrap of common sense?

'It was hot though.' Sulu had a crush on Lindsay Field. If he wasn't careful, she'd have him up on harassment charges faster than you could say 'phaser'. Some days it felt like McCoy was living on a starship full of love-struck adolescents.

'Did you tell her that?' 'Was that why she broke your nose?' Leonard couldn't see but he was pretty sure Sulu was developing two spectacular black eyes right about now. The nose was going to need surgery to realign it.

'No, that was because I didn't move out of the way quick enough.' 'I was too busy admiring her. The way she moves, it's like poetry in motion.'

There was a pause. Bones could just see him daydreaming into space. 'Did you know she has the most beautiful green eyes, Doc? They're sparkle when she smiles. Like dew on fresh grass. Every time I smell freshly cut grass, it makes me think of her.'

_Well, I'll be damned._ The helmsman deeply in love with the Deputy Security Chief. 'Why not just tell her how you feel?'

'What if she rejects me?' Kid had it bad.

Dammit, he usually got Christine to this. She was good at all the relationship stuff. McCoy was rubbish at it, you only had to look at his marriage for an example. Back at the academy, he'd had to do a module or two on counselling. It had been one of the few classes he'd actually had to work at. Even then, it had focused on the traumatic and stress side of starship life, not how to ask out a god-damned girl.

'You won't know if you don't ask.' Leonard eventually resorted to tough love, 'Ask her or don't ask her but if the pair of you let it get this far again, I will report you to the Captain for fighting.'

'Yes-sir.' It was a well know fact that while Jim generally turned a blind eye to minor fights and scuffles, he would come down hard on anyone caught letting it get out of hand. The conversation trailed off, leaving McCoy with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs and await rescue.

At some point, they'd tried I spy, which hadn't lasted long considering all McCoy could really see was the damn ceiling, dimly illuminated by the red emergency lighting. Other games and attempts at conversation had fallen equally flat. They'd fallen back into silence.

It felt like they'd been stuck in their for days when in reality, it had probably only been a couple of hours.

_How long should it take the rescue teams to find them, dammit?_

McCoy smacked both hands against the bulkhead pinning him out of frustration. The bulkhead shifted down an inch. McCoy stifled a cry at the increased pressure on his internal organs; Now it hurt._ Of all the stupid things...Don't do that, Leonard._

Sulu was by his side in an instant. 'What do you want me to do, Doctor?'

Dammit, there was nothing for the helmsman. Even if Sulu could move the bulkhead, they couldn't risk it. If the bulkhead moved anymore, McCoy would be in serious danger of internal bleeding and crush syndrome. It was too dangerous.

A grating noise further up the corridor alerted them to their rescuers, clearing the rubble to create away through. _About bloody time._

A few minutes later, after more grating and scuffling, the first officer's face appeared over McCoy. 'Doctor McCoy, once again, you appear to be stuck.'

_You don't say..._

'Took you long enough to get here.'

'Nurse Chapel was concerned that you had not reported for duty.' Spock explained. 'Taking into account the fire in section 14, this is the most direct path between the gym and sickbay. It was therefore logical that you would be somewhere along this route but damage to other areas of the ship has delayed our response.'

'Yeah, yeah, I know.' McCoy argued, squirming to try and ease some of the discomfort.'You're here now, could you please move this bulkhead?'

'Doctor are you sure that would be wise? As you yourself pointed out, it has taken us a considerable duration of time to reach you.' McCoy had to resist the urge to smack the bulkhead again; look where that had gotten him last time. Of course Spock would be that one to actually pay attention to his lecture on rescue procedures.

'Just get this Damn thing off of me!'

The Vulcan hesitated, obviously about to argue, but eventually decided against it. 'As you wish, Doctor.'

Spock lifted the bulkhead just far enough for Leonard to wriggle out from underneath. McCoy groaned in relief as soon as he was free, stretching in a futile attempt to ease the various cramps and aches that had taken residence. His hand curled around his stomach, trying to soothe the memory of the restricting pressure that had been there.

'I believe it would be wise if you reported to Sickbay Doctor.' Where else did the damn green-blooded hobgoblin think he was going to go? Leonard brushed off the dust; his uniform was filthy but it would have to do.

McCoy had patients to treat.


	9. Drowning

**9\. Drowning**

Summary: Bones goes for a swim.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Hope you enjoy! Please keep reviewing.**

It was a well known fact that Leonard McCoy hated away missions. No matter how safe Starfleet said the mission was, they always seemed to go to pot. That was Jim's fault, he was a magnet for danger and trouble; even when the kid didn't go looking for trouble, it would still find them. The Captain could go on as many away missions as he pleased, Leonard didn't care, except Jim always seemed to feel a need to drag him along for the ride.

In any other situation, the planet would have been idyllic however McCoy was currently running for his life. His muscles ached and lungs burnt but he kept running, hot on the heels of the Captain and Lieutenant Sulu. He could hear the locals, whooping and cheering as they got closer in pursuit of their prey. The sound just made McCoy run faster, until he was running as fast as he could, ducking under branches and leaping over logs. All he could do was put one foot after another and pray that he didn't trip, then they burst out of the trees and there was nowhere else to run.

'Cliff.' Sulu gasped, skidding to a halt at the edge, scattering pebbles down in to the bottom of the canyon.

'Now what?' McCoy asked, struggling to catch his breath and looking to Jim for an answer.

It wasn't safe to jump. There was over a one hundred foot drop down to the trailing river at the bottom. They had no way of telling how deep the river was; chances were, not deep enough. They would more than likely break their necks if they tried. _Dammit._

McCoy turned around to see the locals closing in around them. Whichever idiot who'd reported that the planet was uninhabited had better hope they weren't due a physical any time soon. The scaly brown humanoids had their spears drawn. This planet was definitely lived on and the indigenous population were _not_ friendly.

Ensign Ilik was already dead. The Rock people had killed him and were happily roasting him on a stick before the away team even knew they were there. What McCoy would have given to have the benefit of Uhura's linguistic skills with them; any attempts to negotiate had only been met with more hostility.

As the away team prepared to fight, more Rock people emerged from trees behind them. Now there were over twenty Rock-people and only three of them. The odds of them making it out of this unscratched, were not in their favour.

He'd only been down there because a previous report had suggested that some of the plants had medicinal properties. McCoy, for one, had no intention of becoming a human kebab.

Jim was shouting at his first officer. 'Spock, get us out of here.'

'Captain, I regret I cannot.' He heard from the other end of the channel. 'As I have already told you, doing so would be a direct violation of the prime directive.'

The doctor snatched the communicator off Kirk. 'Now, listen here you pointy eared bastard, if you don't beam us this second, these people are going to eat us!'

'Doctor, Chapter VII states that Star fleet personnel may not violate this prime directive, even to save their lives or their ship.'

That was when all hell broke loose. The Rock-people attacked and that same directive Spock seemed so keen on quoting meant that they couldn't use their damn phasers. Sulu didn't even have his sword; Thinking this was going to be an uneventful mission, the helmsman had left it back on the ship.

Jim yelled and charged at the crowd. This took the aliens by surprise, causing several of them to back away. Sulu took that as his cue to attack, using the Rock-men's own spears against them to knock them into each other.

That left the doctor face to face with two of the alien species. He also had no idea how he was supposed to take them down. Dammit, he was a doctor, not a damn soldier.

For a moment or two, the three of them circled around each other. The aliens would step one way and the doctor would step the other. Then first Rock-person jabbed his spear at him.

McCoy stepped back to stop from being impaled by the sharp pointy stick thrust at him, only to find the ground beneath his feet gone. He barely had time to think, _Ah, hell, _then he was falling and all McCoy could see was the fast approaching water at the bottom of the canyon.

The world around him exploded in a flurry of white water.

He pushed upwards with every ounce of strength he had. Leonard broke the surface, only to get pulled right back under. The current slammed McCoy against a rock, forcing all the breath he had left to whoosh out of his lungs in a flutter of tiny silver bubbles that were quickly carried away by the turbulent waters.

Learning to swim had been mandatory for all Starfleet cadets. It was doing McCoy no good though. The current was relentless, dragging him along like a rag doll, bashing him against every rock on the bottom. Each time he fought his way to the surface only to be sucked back into the unforgiving depths straight away.

He broke the surface once more. McCoy gasped, desperately trying to draw a breath, before he was pulled under again. Water flooded his mouth forcing him to swallow or choke. His lungs burned for more air.

McCoy felt like he'd been through an old-fashioned washing machine. Round and round the water span him. This was and that way.

He could no longer tell which way was up.

Despite the sunshine on the surface, the water was icy; Shielded by the canyon's sheer cliffs and too fast flowing to heat up in the sun. The cold water had left his body numb. He didn't feel so buffeted by the water any more. He was just drifting now, being pulled helplessly along by the raging waters. Even the cramping from the acid building up in his muscles wasn't so bad.

_He was drowning, Dammit._

McCoy had once had a patient tell him that drowning was a peaceful way to die. He'd never believed it. Drowning, suffocating as your lungs flooded with water, had always sounded terrifying. Now he understood. Under the water, it was calm. Drifting there in the water, it was just like going to sleep.

Distantly, he could see the stars, tiny little lights, swirling around him. It was like a cliché from those old 21st century videos Jim liked to watch. Gradually, the lights grew into one big bright light and an angel appeared in front of him. Then the angel started shouting at him.

'Dammit, Leonard, breathe.' Christine. It was Christine shouting at him.

_Enterprise, he was on the enterprise._

McCoy gasped, coughing against water where it had no damn right to be. His whole body arched with the effort of trying to breath through the water blocking his airway. Hands deftly rolled him onto his side so the water could drain from his mouth. He coughed and spluttered, gagging up torrents of water onto the transporter pad.

The stream was never ending. It poured from his mouth, his nose. McCoy breathed in when he should have breathed out and found himself choking again. Eventually the stream became a trickle, leaving him gasping for breath. Someone pulled a mask over his face, delivering soothing oxygen to his starved lungs, allowing his body to still.

'Watch his spine until we can get a proper scan.' He heard Chapel order. 'Lift on 1...2...3.'

McCoy's head lolled back as they moved him onto the gurney, staying in the same position he was left in.

The corridors passed in a blur as McCoy lay there limply, staring at his breath misting on the oxygen mask in front of his face. His body felt dull and heavy. He shivered under the damp blanket. He was so tired.

An hour later Leonard lay in sickbay, on the edge of sleep. His soaked clothes had been replaced with dry scrubs. The warmth of the blankets was comforting and he was exhausted but sleep was evading him. The nurses had only just left him alone and every time he drifted off, his lungs would remind him that they were not happy, waking him up with the need to cough. Who knew what had been in that water; with his luck lately, he was probably going to get pneumonia, again.

Someone walked over but he footsteps fell short of the bed. Whoever it was didn't say anything, they just stood there, breathing and watching. It wasn't one of his nurses, they wouldn't just stand there, which left two people it was most likely to be. So, in some Spock-worthy logic, he took a punt.

'Stop staring, Jim.' McCoy grumbled, too tired to bother opening his eyes. 'I'm a doctor, not a goldfish.'

'How did you know it was me?'

'You breathe too loudly.'


	10. Electric Shock

**10\. Electric Shock**

Summary: Today was not going to be that day.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Sorry, this one took me a bit longer to write that usual. After deleting and re-writing multiple times, (poor McCoy got electrocuted several different ways) I eventually tried something different. I hope you like it – please review!**

The record for the longest duration without any major injuries onboard the Enterprise was 28 days, 1 hour and 11 minutes. In the two and a half years since, they had never come even close to breaking it. Part of the reason that they'd managed it was that half of the senior staff had been quarantined in sickbay with the Yeklian measles.

McCoy hoped a day would come when they broke that record. They were 3 hours and 12 minutes shy of the record when the first missile hit. It was a direct hit to sickbay. Today it seemed, as the Doctors terminal exploded, was not going to be that day.

…..

Christine had been healing Ensign Helvik's cut hand when the lights turned red, announcing the wailing alarms. When the first shot rocked the ship seconds later, it was the biobed colliding with her head that stopped her from being flung half way across the room.

She was busy strapping the Ensign down when she heard the buzzing and looked up just in time to see the console overload, the shock throwing Doctor McCoy clear. Christine grabbed the nearest medkit and was sprinting towards him when the next jolt threw her to the ground.

The second impact was too much for the already weakened structure. The metalwork screamed overhead before giving up with an almighty crash. The dust settled with shocked silence, despite the alarms still wiling over their heads and the sound of shots being fired outside the ship.

'Report.' Chapel shouted, wiping away a trickle of blood from the cut on her head. As the Nurses started shouting from all over the department, she ticked them off one by one in her head. There was one voice worryingly absent.

Nurse Friday pushed a torch into her hand. The emergency lighting was still failing to kick in. Chapel raised the torch to survey the damage. Two direct shots had left the place a mess; there was no way they could treat patients there. 'Matthews, get those vents working. Kalaya, see if you can isolate that console from the power grid. Jones, you're with me. The rest of you grab all the equipment you can and set up a treatment area down the corridor.'

Ignoring her own injury, Christine started picking her way across the rubble. Just before the ceiling had collapse, she'd seen the explosion throw him across the room. She feared what she was going to find.

Christine spotted his arm first, sticking out from under a relatively intact ceiling panel. With Jones' help they pulled the sheet of metal off of him, allowing her the first look at him since he went down. The doctor was unconscious. His humerus was visibly broken and there were severe burns from his hands, to halfway up his arms, but none of that mattered because McCoy was grey; He wasn't breathing.

Christine shoved her torch into the rubble and felt for a pulse. 'Shit. I need a Cardiac stimulator over here.' Without waiting, she started chest compressions.

While some doctors felt it was old-fashioned and out-dated, Doctor McCoy had always insisted that all members of his staff knew how to perform it. He'd argued that you never knew when a half-busted transporter was going to strand you on a primitive planet with nothing but the clothes on your back. CPR would never compare with a cardiac stimulator and fully stocked medkit but it could buy you time.

Christine was halfway through the second round of compressions when Nurse Jones returned with the stimulator. He stuck the tiny round disk of metal to McCoy's chest. A wobbly line, much like a child's attempt to draw a wave, filled the small screen of the corresponding monitor.

'Dammit, He's in V-Fib.' Christine cursed. The lower chambers of his heart weren't contracting, just quivering. They were going to have to shock him. 'Charging.'

The stimulator whined in an increasing pitch.

Christine pulled her hands as soon as the stimulator reached its full voltage.'Clear.'

'Clear.' Nick confirmed.

McCoy's entire body twitched as the stimulator delivered a jolt of electricity to his heart. Christine waited anxiously for the trace on the monitor to settle. Her heart sank as it resumed the same scrawly wave from before. She started up compressions again.

'Again.' Christine demanded after two more rounds of compressions. 'Charging.' Jones delivered the shock the moment the stimulator reached fully charge. Once again the ECG just returned to an uncoordinated wobble.

'Cut it out Leonard.' Christine muttered, returning to compressions. She was not going to be the one to tell the Captain his best friend was dead. 'Charging.'

_Third time lucky._ She wished as they delivered yet another burst of electricity in an attempt to restart the Doctor's heart. Her eyes didn't leave the monitor as it settled once more. For a moment, there was nothing, just a flat line, then a small blip, a pause, another blip, followed by a much larger spike. Christine sighed in relief. The pattern wasn't pretty but it was a functional beat and that was music to her eyes. She looked up at Jones. 'Ventilator, then Stretcher.'

She rummaged through the medkit and found the triOx. Much like CPR against a stimulator, the triOx was no substitute for actual breathing but it would keep McCoy's cells ticking over until Jones returned with a ventilator.

McCoy took a slow agonal gasp. The action was almost entirely initiated by the muscles in his stomach than his longs but a breath was a breath; beggars couldn't be choosers.

There were days when Christine had had to watch her colleagues and friends, her family on board the Enterprise, dying around her, one by one. Some days there would be nothing she could do; Others she would do everything she could and it would still not be enough. Thankfully, today was not going to be one of those days.

…..

McCoy came around to an uncomfortable sensation he'd felt once before. He'd been intubated. He coughed, choking around the foreign object in his airway.

'I need you to cough on three.' Christine ordered. '1,2,3' He coughed, the tube slid out as she pulled, like a long slimy snake. McCoy swallowed a few times to smooth away the uncomfortable sensation. His throat was on fire but now that the tube was out, he could pay closer attention to his surroundings.

Leonard was surprised to find himself not in Sickbay. He was laying on one of the gurney's they used to transport patients around the ship. There was a cardiac stimulator stuck to his chest, its corresponding display unit propped up on a cargo container next to the portable ventilator. The catheter and oxygen were both indicators that he had and would be in sickbay for the long-haul. His head hurt and both arms were heavily bandaged, preventing him from rubbing away the dull ache in his chest.

'What happened?' His voice was barely louder than a whisper. From the way his thoughts kept slipping away into fog from time to time he realised that M'Benga had him on some strong pain medications and he didn't have the faintest clue why. He couldn't remember.

'Sickbay took several direct hits.' Christine explained. 'The terminal you were at exploded before the ceiling collapsed. It's going to still be a few days before the place is fit for purpose but it's going to take a bit longer to get you back in one piece.'

He rolled his head to the size to get a look at the other injured crewman he was currently bunking with. There were many; the attack had been a bad one.

'How many?' McCoy asked, torn between needing to know and knowing he wouldn't like the answer he would get. With this many casualties there would undoubtedly be a few.

'Five, so far.' Chapel said quietly. 'Three were already dead when they got here.' It was unsaid that there would be more, in parts of the ship so heavily damaged that they hadn't been found yet. The ones who never made it.

Starfleet parameters would declare the losses as acceptable for the mission at hand. As far as McCoy was concerned, it wasn't; it was five deaths too many. That was five mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters and friends who weren't going to be coming home.

A day would come when Doctor McCoy told Starfleet where they could shove their acceptable losses. Sadly, today was not going to be that day.


	11. Hypothermia

**11\. Hypothermia**

Summary: Bones hated the cold.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Hope you all keep reading, please review!**

After several weeks of nothing but system surveys, Jim had jumped at the chance to go get off the ship. McCoy had tried to talk him out of it but his arguments, as well as Spocks, had fallen on deaf ears. Several weeks of boredom had left Jim climbing the walls for a change of scenery.

The distress call had been a trap from the start. They'd arrived at the outpost expecting an epidemic and instead been met with phasers. The distress call had been a set up from Orion slave traders; there had never been an outbreak.

For two days, Kirk and McCoy had been forced to work in the mines deep beneath the outpost. They hadn't seen any other members of the away team though. McCoy didn't even know if they were even still alive.

On the third say, Jim had pick pocketed the detonator and deliberately set off a cave in. In all the chaos, they'd taken out two of the guards and quietly slipped away to the surface. They'd been running ever since.

McCoy hung his head over his knees; He couldn't keep this up. His breath came in breathless pants, 'Dammit, Jim, stop.'

Jim anxiously looked over his shoulder in the direction that they had just come from. 'Bones, We've got to keep moving.'

Outside the mines it was sub-zero. Bitter winds stung every scrap of exposed skin and seeped their way through his clothes and sank all the way to his core. Their thin uniforms offered little protection against the raw cold.

The constant shivering wrecking his body were achingly painful but shivering was good. The rapid muscle contractions were his body's attempt to generate heat to keep him warm, to keep him alive. It was when the spasms stopped he needed to worry.

McCoy looked at the desolate landscape. There was nothing but ice and snow as far as the eye could see.

'Are you out of your corn-fed mind? We've got no food, no way to contact the Enterprise and most importantly no warm clothes.' Even if they could find something out here to burn, they couldn't start a fire because they had nothing to light the damn thing with. Escaping was looking like an increasingly bad idea; survival training could only get you so far with limited resources. He was a doctor, not a damn polar bear. They were going to freeze to death before the ship found them.

Jim held something small and metallic up. It took McCoy a minute to register what it was. 'Where the hell did you hide that?'

The Orions had been thorough when they'd searched McCoy. They'd found and taken everything. Tricorder, medkit, communicator, they'd taken the lot.

'You don't want to know.'Jim was deliberately avoiding McCoy's eyes. A few places sprung to mind and Leonard came to the realisation that his best friend was probably right. He'd learnt that lesson with Jim, more than once, the hard way.

'Well then why haven't you contacted the damn ship already?'

'Can't, I tried.' The Orions have activated some kind of localised blocking device that's jamming our communications. We've got to get further away.'

They walked for over an hour. Every now and then, Jim had tried to raise the enterprise to no avail. All they kept getting was static. Aside from that, they walked in silence; There was no point in wasting energy they needed to survive. It wasn't like there was anything to say anyway.

The more they walked the harder it was to keep going. By they time they reached the ridge, McCoy was stumbling more often than not. He stood and looked up at the steep incline. The face was a wall of ice was almost sheer apart from the occasional ledge jutting out every now and then.

Jim reached up and pulled himself up by the first ledge. 'Come on, we need to climb.'

McCoy had lost feeling in his hands and feet long ago. They didn't even hurt anymore. When he'd woken up three days ago, turning into a human popsicle had not been on his list of things to do. After several meters, his numb fingers failed to find purchase onto the ridge. Leonard scrabbled to regain his grip, only to find himself falling.

After hitting ever rock sticking out on his way down, he found himself come to a still at the bottom of the slope. McCoy lay there, unable to find the energy to move. The tumble had left his clothes soaked through. He hadn't known the point at which he'd stopped shivering but there was no point in worrying about something he could do nothing about.

_Why not just go to sleep here..._

'Come on Bones, we've got to keep moving.' He knew that Jim was right, that he should get up. He was done though; This was it, he couldn't go any further.

'Can't' McCoy slurred. _Dammit man, he was so tired._

_'_Kirk to Enterprise, come in.' The bleep announced that Jim had opened the communicator. 'Enterprise, do you read me.' All the captain got for his efforts was more static, just like last time and the time before that.

_They can't hear you..._

Jim slammed the communicator down in frustration. It bounced against the ice, before coming to a rest near where Leonard had fallen. Jim slid to the ground at the bottom of the cliff, head sinking into his hands.

McCoy didn't know how long he'd lay there in the snow. The Captain had gone quiet a while ago. Leonard couldn't even tell if he was still breathing.

'Enterprise to Kirk, come in kirk.'

It took all of McCoy's effort to open his eyes again.

'Captain do you read? Please respond.'

The tiny piece of metal lay a foot away from him, where Jim had thrown it earlier. It took several attempts to reach it and several more to hit the respond button.

'McCoy...here.' Distantly he could hear Uhura talking to him, but the Communicator had fallen through his frozen fingers. He was so cold.

The scene McCoy woke to had become way too familiar for comfort over the last two years. It wasn't much that different from when he'd fallen into the river the previous month, only this time he wasn't alone. He turned his head to see Jim on the biobed next to him, his spiky hair the only identifiable feature visible beneath the mountain of blankets. Across the room and on his other side, he was relieved to see the missing members of the away team still alive.

The sickbay was pretty empty and the lights turned down low suggesting it was gamma shift, when most of the ship was asleep. There would be no doctor on duty, just a handful of nurses. With only two doctors onboard and three shifts to fill, they just didn't have the staff. Gamma was always the quietest shift so he and Geoff took it in turns to be on call, the nurses only calling them in if an emergency came in that they couldn't handle.

Satisfied that everyone was alive, and safe, McCoy went back to sleep. This was the Enterprise. They lived by warping from one crisis to another. Who knew how long the peace and quiet was going to last?


	12. Heatstroke

**12\. Heatstroke**

Summary: It wasn't what Bones had had in mind.

**Warning: Contains mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Has now been edited to (hopefully) fix the switching between tenses. As always, I hope you enjoy! Reviews would be nice!**

When he'd told Jim that he wanted to go somewhere warm for a change, this was not what he'd had in mind. The box was an oven. He just had to get near to the sides for them to fry the hairs off his arms. The air was suffocatingly thick with heat, burning his lungs with every breath. Even Spock would have found the temperature a little on the warm side.

McCoy lay as still as a statue on the sand, the slightest movement sending his skin into contact with the scorching sand that lined the metal box holding him captive. The worse thing of it all was he had no damn idea how in hell he'd ended up here.

He was too damn hot and it was just getting hotter, the more time that passed.

He had no idea how long he'd been laying there. There was no sense of time in the box, he couldn't see the sun. It could have been minutes, hours or even days. He didn't know.

McCoy knew he needed to drink more water, but just the thought was making him feel sick. What little water he had managed to swallow wasn't sitting comfortably in his stomach. Vomiting was counter-productive to re-hydration.

His muscles ached and the heat was making him drowsy. He'd stripped off his shirt a while ago, using it to protect himself from the boiling sand he lay on. McCoy could feel it underneath him, soaked in the same sweat that beaded across his skin. The stickiness on his skin felt disgusting. What he would have given for a cool shower with real water. He was so hot, Dammit.

…..

When McCoy woke he was on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

His mouth was dry and stuffed with what felt like cotton wool. He was so thirsty. It was ironic; he was surrounded by water yet could not drink.

The boat rocked from side to side. McCoy didn't even think the thing could be called a boat. It was a piece of wood that just about seemed to float. Raft seemed more apt. Either way, he wished that the damn thing would stay still.

The sun beat down on him relentlessly. There was no where to shelter; The heat was so strong. He thought about jumping into the water but doubted he'd have the strength the pull himself back onto the boat. He'd more likely end up sinking the flimsy raft and drown.

Even the smallest movement sent the boat lurching violently to the side, threatening to tip him into the deep waters below. Who knew what monsters lurked beneath the surface. Scared of foundering, he lay as still as he could.

McCoy covered his eyes to beat off the dizzying brightness, wishing that the world would stop spinning. His raft dipped and rose with the waves. His stomach churned with the motion.

He crawled over to the side of the raft and heaved bile into the water.

McCoy rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, willing the boat to stop rocking. His head hurt and his heart pounded frantically in his chest. Now the taste in his mouth was like something had died in there.

A while later, shouting made him look up. For a moment McCoy thought his salvation had come, only when he looked there was nothing. It was just him, on his raft, surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. The dehydration and heat was making him hear things.

When he heard the explosions he decided that it was just another hallucination. He was hearing things; there was no way anything out here could ignite. It was too damn wet.

A particularly large wave brought him out of his reverie and sent his stomach flip-flopping again. McCoy found himself hanging over the edge of the precarious raft again as bile rose in his throat. He was quickly reduced to dry heaves.

Something bumped against the raft. He fell backwards into the middle of the boat. Tentatively, he peered into the water and found himself face to face with a huge shark. The shark grinned back at him, displaying its mouthful of rather terrifying, sharp, pointy teeth. _Ah, hell._

McCoy scrabbled back to the middle. Maybe if the Shark couldn't see him, it would forget that he was there and wouldn't want to eat him. He was a doctor dammit, not fish food. He didn't taste nice at all. Too many bones.

Suddenly the boat capsized and he was tossed into the ocean. The water was freezing. McCoy tried to swim only to be pulled back by something catching on to his leg. He looked down to see a giant octopus wrapping its tentacles around his ankles. He kicked out at the creature to free his legs, but another just took its place.

'Get off me, Dammit.'

Suddenly there were thousands of the bastards, clinging to his arms, his legs, his body. He tried to shake them off but the more he flailed the tighter they held on, pulling him down further into the water.

'Doctor McCoy, we need to cool you down.'

He was dehydrated, he was hallucinating things; the fish hadn't spoken to him. McCoy struggled against the restraining tentacles. He needed to get out of the water before the Shark came back.

The suckers were everywhere, dragging him down, pulling him back. He was losing, quickly; the effort was making him exhausted. The boat was drifting further and further away. Eventually, he couldn't keep it up. He closed his eyes and let the water rush in over his head as the bastards pulled him down to the darkness below.

…..

A breeze played across his skin and the ground beneath the him was finally still. Maybe he'd finally drifted into land. For a moment, when he opened his eyes, he thought that night had finally fallen. Then he heard the beep that seemed to be permanently etched into his head.

_Not Land, sickbay._

Somehow, he'd gained one of the private rooms, in the back of the department. Briefly, he worried that he'd caught something contagious but then decided it was because the room was so cool. While McCoy wasn't cold, other patients would be. He didn't know whether to be relieved that he was back on the Enterprise, or groan at being a patient once again.

The lights in sickbay had been turned down low, just light enough so that the nurses didn't trip over in the dark. The breeze was the environmental controls blowing cool air out of the vent. The movement against his skin was refreshing.

McCoy was wearing nothing but one of those flimsy gowns, that never seemed to meet at the back ,and a thin sheet covering his legs. For once, there was no oxygen but he still had tubes and needles in some darn uncomfortable places.

Jim was slouched over the bed with his his arms. McCoy knew that position well; all too many times the roles had been reversed. It wasn't comfortable one bit. 'You're going to throw your back out.'

Jim startled awake and then smiled. 'Bones! You back with us?'

'What happened?' McCoy hated that he had to ask.

'Heatstroke and severe dehydration.' M'Benga walked in and picked up McCoy's chart.

Well that answered the medical side, but not actually how he'd ended up imprisoned in a metal box or stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean. There were too many gaps in his memory; he couldn't tell what had been real and what wasn't. Leonard looked at the Captain for answers.

'The Krenn insurgency didn't like that the high council were negotiating with the Starfleet and the federation.' Jim explained. 'They drugged and kidnapped you with the intent of using you as a hostage to ensure their own demands were met.'

McCoy groaned. It happened every time; why was it always the most peaceful planets that had the deadliest secrets?

'No more away missions.' He muttered as M'Benga checked the bag of fluids, dripping through one of the IV's in his arm, before crouching down to check something hanging under the biobed. Leonard stared at the ceiling with embarrassment as he realised what it was. He was then embarrassed that he was embarrassed; McCoy was a doctor, he did this all the time, but it was a hell of a lot different when he was on the other side of the fence. 'Kidneys function's improved.'

'So I can get out of here?' He dared to hope.

M'Benga looked at him, similar to the way Spock did when he thought you were being so illogical it wasn't worth pointing out. 'I said improved, not fine.'

_Dammit. _If he didn't know better, McCoy would think his colleague was after his job.

The corner of M'Benga's mouth twitched when McCoy said that out loud. If it wasn't for the ears, Geoff could have easily passed for a Vulcan. 'You're the one who keeps ending up as my patient. Besides, you get too much paperwork.'


	13. Infection

**13\. Infection**

Summary: Bones gets bitten.

**Waarning: contains mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Landmark chapter! I'm now over halfway through the list of prompts I've been working from. As usual, hope you enjoy! Please review!**

The shouting drew him out of his office. McCoy couldn't see much beyond the gaggle of people milling around biobed three.

Leonard picked up a hypospray of sedative on his way over. He had a feeling it was going to be necessary. His mind registered the red security officers but pushed it aside and turned to the first nurse he encountered. 'Report.'

'She just went crazy.' Chapman said, struggling to keep her grip on Dawson's ankle. McCoy assessed the patient; Lieutenant Dawson was inconsolable, lashing out and kicking at the hands holding her down. She wouldn't stop shouting long enough for him to ask her any questions.

McCoy readied the hypospray and prepared to inject it.

Suddenly Dawson twisted her head around and sank her teeth into his hand. McCoy dropped the hypospray.

'Dammit.' Leonard cursed, pushing into the bite to get his hand free. Dawson finally stilled as the sedatives finally kicked in, leaving McCoy to stare at the semicircle of tiny punctures adorning his hand.

…...

Geoff had been among the first wave to come down with the sickness, not long after Lieutenant Dawson. He'd treated the away team when they'd first come in. Dawson and the away team had just been the beginning; within hours, sickbay had been swamped and McCoy had been the last Doctor standing. The sickness only affect humans; little comfort when that made up 95% of the Enterprise's population. Chapel and her nurses had helped where they could, but it hadn't been enough. The responsibility of finding a treatment had rested squarely on his shoulders.

His hand throbbed painfully underneath the bandage he'd slapped on it several days previous.

McCoy had wrapped the bite to stop it bleeding, intending to go over it with a dermal regenerator later. It hadn't been much later that all the first wave of patients had come in and the department had been all hands on deck. In all the chaos, he'd forgotten completely.

Leonard ran his other hand through his hair, disgusted at the feel of grease and dirt residing there but was long past the point of caring. No doubt he stank worse than a Klingon garbage scow but forget the last time he'd had a shower; McCoy couldn't remember the last time he'd slept, or the last time he'd eaten a substantial meal, not just a couple of mouthfuls during lulls in the storm. The resulting combination was that he felt, and probably looked, like shit.

He looked longingly at the sofa in his office. It was a far cry from his own bed but sickbay was too short-staffed right now for him to leave. It wouldn't be fair on Chapel and her nurses. Even if he could leave, McCoy wouldn't, not with Jim on a ventilator just down the corridor. While the Kid hadn't caught the sickness, he'd been allergic to the damn vaccine. Sometimes McCoy didn't know what was best, let the captain take his chances with the disease or risk him being allergic to the vaccine along with everything else under all the god-damned suns.

He knew that his back would regret it when he woke but right now the sofa looked as comfortable and inviting as a king-sized bed.

_Just five minutes._

…..

Chapel poked her head inside McCoy's office in search of him. She thought she had seen him go in there earlier. For a moment she thought the lights had just been left on and there was no one in there but then her eyes fell on the sprawled out form, laying face down, on the sofa. Christine smiled. Sickbay had been running flat out for days now and she had been in no doubt her boss was running on nothing but fumes and stolen couch naps for several hours now. It was about time the doctor caught some sleep.

Christine was just about to leave when a something caught her eye. There was a slight sheen coating his skin that had caught in the light. As she got closer, she noticed that while the doctor's skin was pale, his cheeks were flushed pink. Her hand hesitated, feeling the heat radiating from his skin.

'Doctor McCoy.' Christine said softly, shaking him gently awake.

McCoy woke with a start and stared blearily around him. 'What's the emergency?'

'You've got a fever.' She could see on his face that he was preparing to run.

'Dammit, Chapel, I haven't got time for this.' McCoy started to push himself up off the sofa only to cry out and sank back down. Christine hadn't thought it had was possible for him to go any paler. His eyes were glazed over as he slumped against the wall.

'Doctor McCoy?' She asked, concerned about the lack of response. When she got none, Christine grabbed the tricorder from the doctors desk. The beeping of her scan seemed to bring him back round.

'M'fine, dammit.' He protested, pushing away the tricorder she was waving in his direction. The bandaged hand now cradled against his waist didn't go unnoticed. She know when he'd injured it but the bandage was ratty and heavily stained.

'Right, so you didn't just nearly pass out?' Christine held the display up so he could see it. 'Cut the crap, Leonard.'

Christine didn't wait for a response to start unwrapping his injured hand. Crusty with dirt and various other bio-hazards that had built up over the last few days. McCoy hissed in pain as the cloth stuck to the wound underneath. His entire hand was red and swollen. Thick yellow puss oozed out of the angry wounds.

'You're an idiot.' Chapel told him as she disposed of the soiled bandage. In an age where medicine was so advanced and equipment readily available, you had to be stuck on a primitive planet for a wound to get that bad. 'It's infected.'

Christine gave him back his hand and went to gather the supplies she needed to clean it. Part of her expected the doctor to have done a disappearing act when she returned. Despite her having gotten side-tracked, McCoy was exactly where she'd left him, only more horizontal. She thought he was asleep before he spoke.

'No sedatives.' McCoy grumbled, warily eyeing the hypo on her tray. Man, did he have trust issues. Her boss was dead on his feet and didn't look like he needed a sedative; he could barely keep his eyes open on his own.

Christine held up the vials so he could see the label, 'See, just antibiotics, an antipyretic and a painkiller.'

It was a moment before he nodded in consent, turning his head so that she could get a better angle at his neck. Christine deployed the contents before discarding the now empty hypospray. The effect was almost instant, some of the lines easing from McCoy's face. As she moved to clean the wound, he settled his head against the arm rest and closed his eyes.

Chapel thoroughly cleaned out the wound, sterilising the area before finally re-wrapping the doctors hand with a clean bandage. It would probably scar but there wasn't much Christine could do about that. Even with a dermal regenerator, the wound had gone too long without proper treatment. The regenerator would just seal in any infection left in there.

By the time she finished, McCoy was pretty much fast asleep. He startled slightly as she was inserting the cannula to run a bag of IV fluids through, but was easily convinced to go back to sleep. By the time she'd found a blanket and pulled it up to his chin, Leonard was sound asleep and snoring.


	14. Motion sickness

**14\. Motion Sickness**

Summary: The shuttle broke.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Please review! Hope you enjoy it!**

It was all Jim's fault. Once again, McCoy had protested that he didn't want to go on an away mission, yet once again, he found himself stuck inside a tin can with that damn green blooded hobgoblin and an Lieutenant from engineering who the Doctor doubted could find the right end of a hyper-spanner, even if it bit him in the ass. So yes, it was Jim's fault; the one person on the enterprise from whom he could not refuse an order.

For once, the mission itself had gone surprisingly well. Maybe it was because Jim hadn't come with them. They had arrived on schedule, traded for all the the supplies they had come for at some very good deals. When they had left, even after stopping to take in the local culture, they had been well ahead of schedule for their rendezvous with the Enterprise.

Now they were most definitely going to be late.

It was too late by the time the storm had appeared on the shuttles long range scanners; too late to return to the planet and too late for them to outrun the storm. The storm was too fast and man, that thing was massive.

The plasma storm had damaged the shuttles inertial dampeners almost immediately; those things that stopped the rapid acceleration of jumping to warp, from smashing the crew into the walls, killing them all instantly. Without being able to go to warp, they could only limp along and hope that, when they missed their check in, the Enterprise would come looking for them.

'At current speed, it will take us four hours and 31 seconds to clear the storm.' Spock had told them. 'Unless we manage to reactivate the Inertial Dampeners, it will take us a further 143 hours and 13 minutes to reach our scheduled meeting point at full impulse.'

McCoy would have preferred to have not known that little fact. Damned Vulcan logic.

He was stuck in a tin can being tossed around, by the storm, like a leaf. All this shaking was making him Space Sick. The Inaprovaline he'd injected himself with from his medkit hadn't had any effect. He was still sick to his stomach and dizzy. He would have laid down, except there wasn't space; he would have just been in the way.

The storm buffeted the ship relentlessly. How such a tiny craft could be shaken so much and not shatter to pieces was beyond the Doctor. If they made it through this alive, he was never going to take inertial dampeners for granted again.

Lieutenant Simmons was muttering to himself and frantically tapping away at the console in attempt to keep the craft on course while Spock attempted to repair the inertial dampeners. Neither of them was doing a particularly good job of it, in McCoy's opinion, but he wasn't going to say that out loud. It was a better job than he could ever do. Give him an injured person any day.

Ensign Majii appeared to be just as out of place as McCoy. She was a linguist, praised by Lieutenant Uhura herself, not an engineer or pilot. With nothing but storm induced static on the communications array and their distress signal transmitting automatically, all the pair of them could contribute was to keep as out of the way as possible, while Spock and Simmons fought to keep them in one piece.

McCoy's stomach squirmed with displeasure at being tossed around. He stole a glance at his watch; only an hour had passed. They still had, as their first officer would say, 3 hours and 29 minutes before they cleared the storm.

'Sir, You don't look so good.' Ensign Majii said. 'You Okay?' McCoy didn't trust his ability not to throw up enough to respond.

Just pick a star on the horizon and focus on it. It was simple enough, except there were no stars outside the window. All McCoy could see was that God-damned storm. Under normal circumstances, he might have considered the swirling gases in hues of golds, pinks, purples and blues to be quite mesmerising. Right now, it was just making him even more nauseous. Everything out the window was moving; Dammit, why couldn't just one thing stay still?

McCoy swallowed thickly against the bile rising in his throat. He hadn't thrown up in a shuttle since his academy days and refused to let this storm ruin his streak; Jim would never let him hear the end of it if he did.

He groaned and closed his eyes, seeking stillness and hoping that would help. If anything, it just made things worse. He could still feel every lurch and roll.

_Ah, hell._

The next lurch gave his Lunch momentum and sent McCoy hastily reaching for the shuttles tiny bathroom. The door banged back open behind him and he barely made it over the receptacle before he threw up. It was safe to say that there was something that tasted worse than Starfleet rations and that, ladies and gentlemen, was said rations making a reappearance.

McCoy heaved, and heaved. Each time the heaving subsided, it wouldn't be long before the ship lurched again, setting his stomach into revolt once more. It didn't matter that there was nothing left to bring up, or that his stomach cried in agony from exertion.

McCoy hated shuttles. They were just as bad as the damn transporter.

_Solar flare, Andorian shingles, tiny crack in the hull. Disease and danger, wrapped up in darkness and silence._ He'd told Jim that years ago, while sitting in a tin can that had seen less better days than this one. _13 seconds._ That was how long it would take their blood to boil when exposed to the hard vacuum of space.

Sometimes being a doctor was more of a curse than a blessing; he could currently think of 53 different ways that he could die inside this piece of scrap with wings. It had been a miracle that he'd passed basic flight in his first year. It was a compulsory course that every Starfleet member had to pass that taught them to fly a shuttle in case of an emergency. McCoy had tried everything he could think of to get out of it. He'd been unsuccessful.

The only reason that he'd passed was because of Jim. Damn kid had deliberately eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, despite it containing at least three things on his deadly allergic list. McCoy had been so focused on getting the damn shuttle on the ground so he could treat the idiot, he hadn't really given anything else much thought.

Eventually, while his stomach was still far from calm, the gagging stopped. McCoy hung his head over the bowl, lacking the energy to move away or even flush.

_Carrots,_ McCoy thought distantly, _Why's there always carrots in it?_ He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten carrots.

'Here.' He hadn't noticed Ensign Majii come up behind him. He accepted the canteen held out to him, swished a bit round his mouth, then spat before, for lack of a better word, collapsing against the bulkhead behind him. He closed his eyes again, focusing on just taking steady breaths and maybe just a small part of him was hoping that he could fall asleep there.

'Come on sir.' Majii said softly, gently pulling him upright by his elbow. 'You can't sleep there, you'll get cramp.'

McCoy let her guide him over to one of the rear benches she'd cleared so he could lie down. It was a squeeze but if he bent his legs, it was better than the cramped bathroom. Anything horizontal was good. Somehow the motion of the shuttle wasn't so bad any more.

'You should be a nurse.' McCoy murmured, flopping a hand up behind his head. She'd be a good one, better than half the incompetent idiot sent in the last transfer. There'd been a doctor in there too, a Doctor Wilby. _Incompetent pompous ass._ Less than a week and several incidents later, the guy had been sent packing. Sadly, the same could not be said for the nurses.

Ensign Majii laughed then jumped, her hear going to her earpiece. 'Enterprise, we hear you...'

McCoy sighed in relief at the promise of stable ground in the near future. The Cavalry was here._ About time, Dammit._


	15. Neurological Disorder

**15\. Neurological Disorder**

Summary: All the scans and tests had come up blank.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Sorry this one took a while to get finished – I got stuck with several short snippets that didn't want to join together. I hope the word count makes up for it. Life's suddenly become very busy and is going to be like that for a couple of weeks. I'm going to update when I can. Hope you're all still reading, please review! Enjoy!**

Sickbay was quiet but McCoy knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. They were currently in orbit of an uninhabited class M planet Starfleet had ordered them to survey to see if the planet was suitable for colonisation. Jim had insisted on running the away mission himself.

Chapel had insisted that it was a good opportunity for the pair of them to go over all the outstanding paperwork that made up the mountain that had buried his desk. McCoy had been too busy awaiting the dreaded call from the bridge to argue.

'God-damned paperwork, as if Starfleet doesn't give me enough damn work to do.' Christine smiled at McCoy's latest attempt at ranting. She was surprised that she didn't know this rant of by heart, yet. God knows she'd heard it enough times before. They were somewhere around the three hundred and tenth report that needed signing by the CMO in person.

A recent change in regulations meant that he had to review the medical history of every crew member on board, alongside their annual physical and sign to say that nothing had changed and they were still fit for duty. It was fine if you were the CMO of a small ship, but the Enterprise was one of the largest in the fleet.

'I have half a mind to tell those paper pushing bureaucrats where they can...' He trailed off, staring into the distance.

'Doctor McCoy?' Leonard didn't respond. His face was slack and glazed over.

'Dr McCoy.' She repeated, concerned.

Suddenly he stiffened as his eyes rolled back into his head with a grunt. Nurse Chapel barely had time to catch him and ease him down the ground before he started twitching. The twitching became violent Jerks very quickly.

'Get M'Benga in here, Now.' Christine ordered, glancing up at the clock.

The sound of her bosses head against the ground was still sickening, even with the cushioning underneath. During her career as a nurse, she'd seen seizures before but this was different. This was someone she knew and had come out of the blue. It was damn right scary.

'Come on, Leonard.' She pleaded quietly but he kept on thrashing. His back arched as the muscles tensed, only to collapse back down as they released. The edge of his lips were tinged blue and his breath came in gasps as he fought against the spasms constricting against his chest.

McCoy finally went limp and his breathing evened out, letting Christine take a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. She looked at the clock again and rolled McCoy into the recovery position. 2 minutes 49 seconds. It had felt like an eternity.

After a couple of minutes, his eyes started to flicker under his eyelids. A groan alerted Chapel that McCoy was starting to come around. After a bit of prompting, he half opened his eyes. They rolled around the room, bleary and unfocused. When Christine spoke to him, he would briefly look in her direction before drifting away again.

'What happened?' M'Benga asked, keeping the tone low and calming. McCoy was likely too out of it to understand what they were saying, he'd just be paying attention to what the voices sounded like.

'Grand Mal seizure, lasting 2 minutes 49 seconds.' Christine explained. 'Stopped Three minutes ago. Been groggy and disorientated since.'

McCoy jostled about on the floor, seemingly without purpose. The fidgeting was what happened when you combined sensory and motor disorientation with muscle weakness. Research suggested that a Tonic-clonic seizure used up a whole day's worth of energy. He was undoubtedly going to be sore and tired for a couple of days.

'Lets get you off the floor.' Geoff suggested after ten minutes, nodding at Christine. McCoy was still fairly out of it but in the last five minutes his movements had become much more purposeful. 'Think you can stand?'

When he didn't get a protest, M'Benga took that as a yes. Between the two of them they managed to haul Leonard first into a sitting position, then to his feet. It took them a while to reach the nearest biobed. McCoy was still lacking a lot of coordination, making their progress slow. His legs kept tangling underneath him like wet spaghetti.

'W'app'nd?' McCoy slurred as they settled him back on the biobed.

'You had a seizure.' Christine told him calmly.

'Seizure?' McCoy mumbled back, like the word sounded foreign in his mouth. His eyes drifted shut and head flopped forward for a second before startling back open.

M'Benga started scanning with the tricorder, 'How do you feel?'

'Head hurts.' McCoy protested, swatting feebly at the offensive buzzing.

'We'll give you something for that' Geoff nodded at Christine to go and get the required hypospray. 'I'm going to run a couple of scans, okay?'

McCoy closed his eyes but nodded anyway. 'Tired.'

…..

Christine checked the vitals on the biobed as she'd done every half an hour. McCoy had slept for three and a half hours, right through all the scans M'Benga had ordered. He'd eventually woken an hour ago.

Since then, Leonard had been abnormally subdued and quiet. While he had been much more alert and coordinated, he hadn't been his usual grumpy self. Christine would be relieved when he went back to protesting he was fine, making the new nurses cry and generally competing with the captain for worst patient of the year.

'Chris...' There was something in McCoy's voice that made her look. McCoy was unfocused, staring vacantly. She just _knew_, call it gut instinct or experienced nursing, seconds before his eyes flicked towards his eyelids. She was already shouting for help when he stiffened and the alarms sounded.

Christine was pulling oxygen mask over his face when the cavalry arrived.

'Stats are holding steady.' M'Benga assessed. 'Ready 1cc of Lorazepam but let's hold off for now and see if it stops on it's own again.'

Sure enough, the clock had just reached three minutes when he stilled.

M'Benga picked up the PADD that housed McCoy's chart and started updating his orders.

'Where's Bones?' Christine heard the Captain ask someone outside the curtains. McCoy had insisted that Spock didn't tell Kirk what had happened until he returned from the surface.

Christine quickly slipped out to intercept him, closing the fabric shut behind her.

As soon as he saw her, Kirk's face fell, 'What happened?'

'Leonard had another seizure.' Christine explained. 'He's sleeping right now.'

The closest thing that Vulcan's got to surprise crossed Spock's face; the last seizure had been so recent that neither Chapel or M'Benga had had time to inform the first officer of the latest development. 'Do we know what caused the Doctor's latest episode?'

'No, every scan I've run so far have come back empty.' M'Benga said, slipping out to join them. 'I've started Doctor McCoy on some anticonvulsants and ordered some more tests.'

…..

Five weeks and seventeen seizures after the first, both Doctors M'Benga and McCoy had run out of ideas. They had nothing; All the scans and tests had come up blank.

M'Benga had tried every drug to no effect. McCoy would have said they did nothing, except they did do something. The side effects made him feel crap. The first made him so sleepy not enough sleep in the world could keep his eyes open, he woke every morning more exhausted than before he'd gone to bed. The next turned his thoughts into shuttles, constantly jumping to warp every time he tried to catch them, constantly just out of reach. Then there had been the one that made him sick to his stomach. Through it all, McCoy still had seizures that consistently left him tired and grumpy.

McCoy was left with little choice but to ride it out and then wait for the next one to strike without warning. The seizures never lasted more than three minutes but that was a small comfort. With more than two seizures of unidentifiable cause, they were talking epilepsy; it was a diagnosis McCoy wouldn't want to wish on anybody, let alone read in his own medical file.

The worst seizure had been the one in the mess hall, during the first week. After two days without a seizure, M'Benga had finally decided to release Leonard from sickbay under supervision. It hadn't lasted long. Jim had taken time out of his schedule to take him to Lunch.

McCoy didn't actually remember going to Lunch. What he did remember was coming round on the floor of the very crowded room. The seizure itself had actually been quite short but it had been the most embarrassing. With all those muscles rapidly contracting and relaxing at random, of course it had to have been those muscles that had been involved. It didn't matter that there were only faces of concern on each of the bystanders, or that he'd had no control over his body, what did matter to him was that he had lost bladder control in front of all of those people

That had been two weeks ago. Ironically he hadn't had a seizure since.

McCoy was facing the end of his career, both in Starfleet and as a Doctor. In less than a week, they would reach starbase 17, where he would have to disembark and catch a shuttle back to earth. Their arrival there would mark the end of his posting onboard the Enterprise.

The orders had come in from Starfleet Medical; M'Benga was stepping up as CMO and a replacement Doctor was being transferred to the Enterprise. They had just rendezvoused with the USS Callisto to allow Doctor Alice Styron to board.

McCoy might not be able to practise but he was perfectly capable of standing in the transporter room. Even on medical leave, he was still technically CMO, at least for the next few days. It was only polite to welcome the new Doctor on board, would have been rude not to. It was either that or sit around in his quarters, wallowing in self-pity and waiting for the next seizure to hit. It was a bitter sweet moment as he stood next to Jim and Chapel, waiting for Doctor Styron to arrive. He'd spent the better part of the last two years campaigning to Starfleet to assign a new Doctor only for the day to herald his immanent discharge. McCoy just hoped Doctor Styron was better than the last doctor Starfleet had sent.

Everything he cared about was onboard this ship. He would end his service in the same way he had begun it, with nothing left but his bones. He had no idea what he was going to do, maybe teach. There was always research too.

It wouldn't be the same though.

McCoy didn't hear Scotty say, 'Energize.'

…..

When you woke up to the sound of a monitor in the infirmary, it was never a good thing. Jim was fast asleep in the chair beside him. He would pissed if McCoy didn't wake him, but the kid looked like he needed the rest.

Someone had thoughtfully dimmed the lights and for that, McCoy was grateful. After a few minutes of just laying there, the door slid open and M'Benga came in.

'You gave us quite a scare.' He said, checking the numbers on the monitors. Jim didn't stir.

McCoy swallowed a few times to unstick his tongue. 'How long?'

'Forty five minutes.' Geoff said quietly. 'You were in Status.' That explained why he felt like he'd mainlined shots of Andorian Brandy. They would have given him enough sedatives to down a whole battalion of angry Klingons. It would take days for them to work their way out of his system.

'I ran another scan while you were unconscious.' M'Benga continued.

McCoy heard the implication. 'Found something?'

Geoff nodded and showed him the PADD to have a look. Squinting at the displayed scan made his headache worse but he quickly spotted what his colleague had noticed. A white spot where it should have been dark.

'Bug.' McCoy said, trying to point at it with a shaky effort. It was a parasite actually, but that was more difficult to say.

Geoff nodded. 'When it's distressed, it sends off electrical impulses, which subsequently cause seizures. As it's grown, those impulses have grown stronger.'

'Commander Spock worked out that it's sensitive to a frequency sent out by the transporters when they're in operation.' He continued.' We ran the transporter logs from the last month against your seizure's and they matched exactly.'

'Get it out.' McCoy pleaded. He was exhausted; his eyes were heavy but he couldn't sleep even if he tried, not whilst knowing that that thing was still inside his brain.

'We're working on it sir.'

…..

McCoy's head hurt and he felt mildly nauseous. For a moment he thought he'd had another damn seizure, then remembered the last scan. With that, the fog-lifted slightly and everything came rushing back to him; Geoff had found a parasite and then performed brain surgery to remove it.

Suddenly someone peeled back his eyelids to torch his retinas.

McCoy groaned, turning his head in an attempt to lose the bright light.

_Bad idea._

The movement caused the burning pain inside his head to explode into a supernova. McCoy gagged as the nausea spiked. The person with the light had obviously been expecting this and had a bowl ready under his chin as he spat up meagre amounts of bile.

A hypospray stung his neck with what McCoy hoped was an anti-emetic. There was definitely an analgesic somewhere in the mix. As the supernova dimmed inside his head to a dull roar, he was finally able to hear someone talking to him.

'Doctor McCoy,' He didn't recognise the voice, it was female though. 'I need you to open your eyes for me.'

Leonard warily opened his eyes to find a woman standing in front of him. She was young and, if she hadn't just tried to torture him with a pen light, he might have thought her beautiful. Jim would have liked her.

As he focused on more of his surroundings, he realised with relief that he was still on the Enterprise; he'd half expected to find himself on starbase 17 or imprisoned in Starfleet Medical back on earth. Beyond, whom he now guessed to be Doctor Styron, unsurprisingly was Jim. 'Hey Bones.'

Satisfied with his answers to her questions, Doctor Styron wandered off to check on the only other patient in sickbay. As soon as she was gone, Jim cockily tossed a PADD into his lap. 'I wasn't able to talk M'Benga into letting you keep the parasite as a souvenir, something about it being a biohazard and Starfleet containment protocols, so I thought this would cheer you up instead.'

'What is it?' McCoy asked blearily, just thinking about reading it was making his headache worse. Wanting to go back to sleep, he wasn't in the mood to play twenty questions with Jim either.

Jim smiled, 'Starfleet's agreement to reinstate you as chief medical officer as soon as M'Benga clears you for duty.'

It was McCoy's turn to echo Jim's smile. That was the best Damn news he'd heard in a long while.

* * *

**Status Epilepticus** – a seizure that lasts over 30 minutes. It's a medical emergency because the longer a seizure lasts, the less likely it is to stop on its own. During a long convulsive tonic-clonic seizure, your body struggles to circulate oxygen around your body. When this happens, your brain doesn't get enough oxygen. Over a long period, this can lead to brain damage and death.


	16. Puncture

**16\. Puncture**

Summary: Jim found Bones' predicament amusing. Bones, less so. Spock, well, he was just spock.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Originally, Bones got stabbed with a knife. I wrote half of it, then decided that both the previous chapter and the next are quite serious, so he needed a bit of a break from near death, potentially career ending, incidents. To all you Americans reading out there, apologies in advance for the British spellings. Please don't forget to review! Enjoy!**

McCoy and the rest of the away team were once again running for their lives. It had become an unsettlingly familiar experience recently. 'Chased by angry natives' had appeared with worrying frequency on various reports lately. The worse thing was that for once, he couldn't even blame Captain Calamity. It wasn't Spock's fault either, he couldn't help having pointy ears.

Something hit him from behind, causing McCoy to stumble. It was only a sheer miracle that kept him on his feet. He forced himself to keep running despite the burning fire that was now radiating down his leg.

They hadn't heard or seen any sign of the locals for a while when Jim finally stopped.

'Okay I think we lost them.' Jim looked around them, grinning like a lunatic. Damn kid seemed to enjoy getting chased by angry locals. 'Everyone okay?' Then Jim's eyes fell on him and suddenly the Captain burst out laughing.

McCoy, no longer running in fear for his life, looked down to see what Jim was laughing at.

There damned arrow sticking out of his arse. A foot long, feather tipped arrow.

McCoy had to resist the urge to pull it out. It wasn't safe; There was no telling what damage the arrow had done. If there was a barb on the end, it could do even more damage coming out.

Spock frowned, 'Captain, I fail to see how the doctor's plight is amusing.'

McCoy wished he had a recording device for proof that, contrary to popular and opinion, he and the first officer were perfectly capable of agreeing. Leonard wanted to wipe that smug grin off of Jim's face, court marshal be damned. His current predicament though, meant it would have to wait until his next weekly sparring session with the Captain.

The arrow had gone straight through both layers of clothing before lodging firmly in his gluteus maximus, more commonly known as his butt cheek. In other circumstances the arrow, tipped with fine purple, pink and silver feathers, might have been a work of art. The sociology and archaeology departments might like to have a look at it, but McCoy just wanted the damn thing out of him.

If the indignity of being shot in the arse and Jim laughing at him wasn't enough, there was undoubtedly going to be a hole in his damn trousers; They was his favourite pair. He could request new ones but they wouldn't be the same. It would take weeks of discomfort to wear them in enough to get rid of that crisp starchiness that always came with new uniform.

'Isn't your physical due next month?' McCoy suggested. He couldn't wait; A vaccine for Tellerian haemorrhagic fever would make the mud flea vaccine look like a walk in the park. See how Jim likes it when someone stabs a hypospray into his arse.

Jim barely sobered up, failing miserably to keep a straight face. Within seconds, he was back to being hunched over with uncontrollable laughter. The corner of Chekov's mouth twitched but quickly fell with a glare from McCoy. Sadly, he could not say the same for Jim. Sometimes there were days when he wondered why the hell he was actually friends with Jim.

Spock just stood there, staring at the Captain in disbelief. It was a good couple of minutes before Jim was able to control his laughter long enough to contact the Enterprise. 'Kirk to Enterprise, five to beam up.'

_Christine won the bet. _Leonard thought as they waited for Scotty to beam them up.

At the end of their weekly briefing that morning, the senior medical officers had had a bet on which member of the away team was going to end up in sickbay first. Chapel had bet on McCoy while M'Benga had bet on the Captain. Leonard had refused to take part, deeming that taking a side was just asking for trouble.

Meanwhile, Dr Styron had just looked at them in horror. Whether it was because of the subject of the bet or the regulations three senior officers were breaking, he did not know. One thing McCoy did know was that he would love to see her report that one to the captain.

McCoy tried to ignore the snort of laughter from Scotty as he limped off of the transporter pad. He could feel the stares in the corridor as he people passed. He silently cursed his luck, their return seemed to have coincided with the shift change when the corridors were at their busiest.

When McCoy finally reached sickbay, he'd tried to look around for M'Benga or Christine. Unfortunately, Doctor Styron was on duty and pounced on him before he could escape. Nothing McCoy said or did would make her back down.

Jim smirked at him as she made him lie face down on the biobed. McCoy focused on plotting his revenge, trying to ignore the sensations of her inspecting the wound. The local Doctor Styron gave him had taken the edge off the pain but he could still feel the arrow moving around as she poked at it. 'I'm going to have to cut your clothes on to better look.'

'Kinky.' Jim commented from his perch on the next biobed over. 'You haven't asked her out on a date and she's already trying to get your clothes off.'

The other doctor, to her credit didn't respond. Instead she pulled the curtain around the bay cutting the rest of sickbay off from view and most importantly, Jim out of view. McCoy was grateful she couldn't see his face as blood rushed to his cheeks._ Dammit Jim_.

His trousers were history and his underwear too. As she cut them away, Stryon had kept to the seams where she could but anyone, who'd ever had the misfortune of needing clothes cut off in the emergency room, would know it was near impossible to put the pieces back together. It just wasn't worth the effort; his uniform was destined for the recycler.

The blanket and surgical drape she'd used to cover his legs offered little comfort; It still felt like his arse was hanging out. All it would take was one nurse to barge in there unannounced and his backside would be on display to the whole sickbay.

'This might hurt.' She warned. '3,2,1.'

Doctor Styron pulled.

McCoy yelled as the arrow popped free. 'GODDAMMIT.'

Styron was giving him a disapproving look for the cursing. It was a well known fact that the doctor did not approve of his colourful language in sickbay. It was just as well known that McCoy didn't give a damn about what she thought. If Styron thought he was bad, she should have been there when Christine dislocated her shoulder planet-side last month or during the last prank war, when Jim put blue dye into Uhura's shower. Besides, It was scientifically proven that swearing released endorphins which provided a low level of pain relief.

Maybe next time he'd nominate Doctor Styron to take his place. She'd had long enough to find her feet onboard ship; it would do her some good to get some fresh air and, if along the way she discovered that the world was not so black and white as Starfleet regulations made out to be, then good. While Styron knew her stuff and wasn't a half bad doctor, she was entirely too green when it came to working in space and was too set on following rules and regs to the letter.

As Styron was running a dermal regenerator over the wound that was left, McCoy had a better idea. He made a note to send her assign her to every accident that happened in engineering for the next month. A course of desensitization might be better to take the stick out of her arse.

Anyway, at least the damn arrow was out now.


	17. Psychological Trauma

**17\. Psychological Trauma**

Summary: Sickbay was Bone's domain. Nothing happened in there without his say, until something did. Now he has to deal with the consequences.

**Warning: Heavy on angst and an implied non-consentual mind-meld. Contains mild profanity. **

**#Spoilers for the TOS episode 'Mirror mirror'#**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**This chapter's longer than I'd originally planned. I find angst hard to write and it took me a while to bring it to a close. Even though this is under Star Trek:2009, it inspired by the events during TOS episode 'Mirror mirror'. Please review!**

Sickbay was McCoy's domain. If he could help it, nothing happened in there without his say so. Squabbles and fights were to be left at the door. If you didn't like it you could leave. It made no difference to him if he patched you up before or after you passed out from blood loss, just be prepared for the lecture afterwards. His sickbay was a place of good, a place of healing. To him, sickbay was a place of safety for anyone who needed it.

Sometimes patients would die, but McCoy would be damned if he didn't do everything he could to save them. Sometimes he and his staff had been attacked but they'd always made the bastards pay. This time was different though. This time something had been different. In five minutes, all that good was gone.

It didn't matter that it hadn't been his sickbay. It had still looked and smelt like his sickbay, still felt like his sickbay. For all intents and purposes, the mirror sickbay might as well have been his sickbay. Leonard just didn't feel safe there any more.

McCoy froze as someone accidentally bumped into his arm on the way past. It was several minutes before he was able to control his breathing long enough to move again. Since their return from the mirror universe, the Enterprise had felt even more claustrophobic than ever.

Leonard couldn't miss the concerned looks Christine gave him when she thought he wasn't looking. The worse thing was they were justified. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. He was a mess.

Every corner he turned brought up memories he was trying his damnedest to forget. The slightest brush of skin against his sent him cascading into uncontrollable anxiety. He couldn't bring himself to ride the turbo lift if there was someone else in it. He'd gotten up a whole hour early for breakfast lest a certain first officer turn up. One day the mess hall, stuffed to the brim with people during the lunch rush hour had left him such a nervous wreck that the next day he'd chosen to simply forgo lunch altogether. The food tasted of cardboard anyway. He avoided everything that reminded him of that day.

Leonard had considered asking M'Benga to prescribe some anti-anxiety meds but the other Doctor would want to know why. McCoy could tell him but then the other doctor would have to write a report and everyone would find out. Jim didn't know; McCoy hadn't put the meld in his report. He hadn't told Jim what happened. It would go on his record and he'd be declared unfit for duty.

Two weeks after the incident, the weekly senior staff meeting made it impossible for McCoy to avoid Spock forever. He hung outside the meeting room for as long as he could, unable to think of another excuse for his absence that would satisfy the Captain.

McCoy felt ashamed. He hated that the bastard had reduced him to this. It felt like the other Spock had won.

He'd waited in sickbay as long as he could, hoping for another last minute emergency that never came. Eventually he was unable to put it off any longer. When he finally steeled himself and stepped into the sensor that opened the door, the only seat left was the one he usually sat in, directly opposite the first officer. McCoy barely heard anything said during the meeting. Spock sat across the table from him, within touching distance if the Vulcan chose to move; All he could do was focus on not hyperventilating.

McCoy knew that the fear was irrational but that knowledge was little help. It hadn't been Spock who'd done it to him but at the same time it had been. Every time he heard his Spock speak, he could hear the other Spock's words inside his head. _Our minds are merging Doctor, our minds are one._

The end of the meeting couldn't have come any sooner. Twice, Jim had had to repeat himself because McCoy hadn't heard the question he'd been asking.

'Doctor McCoy, a word, please' Leonard stiffened at the officialness of his friends words, waiting until all the other senior officers had left the room before turning to face his best friend. Jim never called him that to his face; despite Leonard's protests, Jim had always insisted on calling him Bones.

'What's going on Bones?' Jim asked. 'You were barely there in that meeting.'

'I'm just tired.' It wasn't a complete lie; the lack of sound sleep since the incident was taking it's toll. That first night, he hadn't been able to sleep at all. Every time he closed his eyes, he could feel him, the other Spock, in his head. An unstoppable force, prying into every corner of his mind, leaving no thought unturned. The same words over and over again. _I feel what you feel,_

_I know what you know._

He'd woken to sheets drenched in sweat. The bile in the back of his throat forced him to dash to the bathroom where he'd heaved up everything he'd previously eaten until his stomach hurt and tears streamed down his face. Each night was the same, again and again. It was a never ending cycle of a nightmare from which he couldn't wake.

'Bullshit.' It was stupid to think he could get Jim to drop it as easily as that. As his best friend, Jim knew him better than anyone else in the galaxy. 'Chapel says you spend all your time locked in the lab and haven't eaten for days. Spock seems to be under the impression that you've been avoiding him.'

'I'm fine, Jim.' McCoy lied. 'Nothing's going on.' He turned to go.

Jim grabbed his arm, causing McCoy to stiffen.

'Let go Jim.' Hating the edge of panic that slipped in towards the end. The compulsion to flee filled every inch of his body. As McCoy tried to pull away, Jim just tightened his grip.

'Not until you tell me what's going on.' McCoy couldn't bring himself to answer. The tightness around was all consuming. A hand tight and binding, forcing him backwards.

_Our minds are merging,_

He needed to break free.

_Our minds are one,_

The hands needed to _let go_. He needed to make them _let go_.

_I feel what you feel,_

Before he realised what he was doing, Leonard swung at Jim. His fist collided with something solid; The crunch was quickly followed by a torrent of blood. The hand's released their grasp in surprise.

As soon as the restraint was gone, McCoy legged it. He ran blindly, not knowing where he was going, just knowing that he had to get _away_.

It was only later as he collapsed to his knees in the darkness of his quarters that it he realised what he'd done. He'd assaulted not only his Captain, but his best friend. His heart skipped at the word. _Assault_, that was what that bearded bastard had done to him; He was no better than the Spock from that twisted universe.

_Our minds are merging, our minds are one._

The words circled around and around in his head, again and again, over and over as McCoy stayed where he fell, waiting for the security team to come and arrest him.

It felt like hours later that the door chimed. McCoy ignored it. If it was the security team finally coming to get him, the door wasn't going to stop them.

'Bones, open up.' Jim shouted, banging on the door.

Leonard still ignored it, willing Jim to just go away. He couldn't face his friend right now. He wanted, no _needed_, to be alone right now; alone was _safe_.

If he hadn't been standing and facing it, McCoy wouldn't have registered the door opening, a few minutes later, anyway. Jim was the one person on-board from whom he could never hide. _Damn Captain's override._

McCoy cringed at the blood adorning the captain's front; the kid must have convinced one of the other medical staff to fix his nose but hadn't bothered to change his shirt. He half expected Jim to be accompanied by an entire security team. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

Instead, a single figure appeared in the doorway behind Jim. A cold sweat broke out all over him. McCoy swallowed against the rising panic.

There was nowhere to run. Spock was standing between him and the only way out of the room. McCoy would have preferred it if Jim had brought the security team.

Spock stepped into the room. McCoy instinctively took a step back, trying to keep the distance between the two of them as long as possible.

McCoy flinched as the Vulcan took another step towards him. The old metal bulkhead pressed against his back. _Our minds are merging..._

His heart hammered away inside his chest. The urge to flee was overwhelming. He stood there frozen, unable to take his eyes off of Spock.

'Captain, I believe it would be wise if we gave the Doctor some space.' Spock said quietly. 'Our presence appears to be causing him substantial distress.'

'No.' It had been stupid to think Jim would just let it go. He was like a terrier with a bone when he got a bee in his bonnet about something. 'Bones, we're you friends, tell us what's going on.'

McCoy was hyperventilating. He could feel it. He was painfully aware of the bulkhead trapping him from behind. It was the sickbay all over again.

..._Our minds are one..._

Jim took a step forward. McCoy's fight or flight instincts kicked into overdrive. Any closer and the captain would be able touch him. He didn't want that, not after last time.

…_I know what you know..._

'Stop.' He ordered, both to Jim and the voice inside his head. McCoy pointed the hypospray outwards as a weapon, daring Jim to come any closer. He didn't know when he'd picked it up or what was in it. Neither for that matter did Jim.

Jim took a step back, holding his hands up in defence. 'Okay, okay, I get the message.'

'Doctor McCoy, drop the hypospray so we can talk about this logically.' Spock said calmly, still in front of the door. Damn emotionless Vulcan's. The other Spock had been calm too. He'd sounded just like him.

_...I feel what you feel. Our minds are merging, our minds are one..._

'Shut up, Dammit!' Leonard shouted, keeping the hypospray up. He couldn't think. That voice forcing his way into his head, like needles drilling into his skull. He couldn't think straight.

Spock wasn't perturbed. 'Doctor McCoy, what did my counterpart do to you in the mirror universe?'

McCoy froze. He saw Jim give Spock a look of surprise out of the corner of his eyes but he was too busy thinking the same question. His outstretched arm trembled. _How did the Vulcan know?_

'You're irrational behaviour started shortly after your return from the mirror universe, which has led me to conclude that something occurred during your visit to the alternate Enterprise.' It was as if Spock had read his mind, either that or he and Jim were that predicable. 'Furthermore, your continued avoidance of me has led me to believe that I, or more precisely, my counterpart in that universe was somehow involved.'

His legs felt like jelly underneath him. Damn Vulcan logic and observation. Nothing seemed to slip past Spock. McCoy's legs buckled underneath him and the hypospray clattered to the floor. With the tears came out everything he hadn't been able to bring himself to say.

Jim, for once, listened in complete silence. There was no judgement, only anger for the other Spock and at himself. With each word, it felt like a burden was lifted from Leonards shoulders. He hadn't realised how heavy the load had been until it was gone.

As McCoy recounted what had happened, Spock kept his distance, sensing that the Doctor wasn't ready to deal with him yet. Eventually, though, time would heal that wound too.


	18. Sensory Loss

**18\. Sensory Loss**

Summary: 'Wait till you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding.'

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**It just had to be done. Don't forget to review, and enjoy!**

McCoy stumbled into his quarters at the end of a long shift, tossing his PADD onto the first horizontal surface he came across. Right at that point of time, he wanted a shower, food and sleep, preferably in that order. Nine hour hours in sickbay had left him feeling grimy and tired, so he made a beeline for the shower. Forget sonic pulses, he wanted real _hot _water to soothe away the angry aches that resided in his muscles from being on his feet all day.

Leonard was normally a fairly neat person but today he let his clothes fall where they fell. He would pick them up later.

The hot water helped, carrying the dirt away and easing the tension that had built up in his muscles. He would have stayed in the shower for much longer but the prospect of having to go the rest of the week with nothing but sonic showers stopped him from using up all his water rations up at once.

Normally McCoy could go much longer without getting tired but he was exhausted. He chalked it up to coming down with one the minor ailments that always seemed to circulate following shore leave. If you put an individual into close confines with hundreds of strangers, each incubating pathogens that the individual's immune system has never encountered before, for any prolonged period of time then the individual was bound to catch at least one of them. All the vaccine's in the universe couldn't protect you. There was always a mutated strain or two that would slip through. It was a scientific inevitability.

_Either that or you're getting old._

As he towelled himself dry, McCoy became increasingly aware of a burning sensation the soft fabric left across his shoulder. He looked over his shoulder to find it covered in red blotches.

McCoy stared at the angry rash trailing up his back and across his shoulder.

He'd had to contort awkwardly in the mirror just to get a half decent look at it, nowhere near good enough to start diagnosing a cause. _Dammit._

The last thing he wanted to go back to sickbay but he was the CMO dammit, it would be irresponsible not to. He was a doctor, not a hypocrite; Only last month had he had to lecture Jim on ignoring symptoms and trailing infectious diseases around the ship. The last thing his staff needed was an epidemic to cut short their time off.

Doctor Styron was on duty

'Back so soon?' Alice asked, then frowned as she noticed McCoy's damp hair and off-duty clothing. Leonard hadn't paid much attention to what he was wearing; he'd just grabbed the first clean clothes that weren't going to rub too much on his back. A pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt Jim had bought him one Christmas.

McCoy hopped onto the next biobed and pulled the shirt off. A quick glance reassured him it wasn't one of the rude ones. Starting a tricorder scan, Doctor Styron peered closely at rash. After a minute, she reached out tentatively and poked the blotchy skin. The slight touch sent shooting pains spiraling out across his back.

'Looks viral in nature. If I had to guess, something from the Shingles family.' Over the last couple of months McCoy had worked with her, he'd discovered that Alice talked to herself as she worked, claiming the process helped her to think. Most patients found it unnerving but right now Leonard found it comforting. 'Maybe Terran but could be Andorian if we're unlucky. I'd have to run a blood test to be sure.'

As she talked Her eyes flickered between his back and the whirring tricorder.

'Congratulations,' Styron said, eventually closing the tricorder . 'You've just won an all inclusive stay in the private suite.' McCoy groaned at the implication. Whatever caused the rash was contagious enough to warrant a stay in isolation. He'd been all over the ship that day, treating dozens of patients during his shift. When Alice finally isolated the exact strain, chances were high that they were going to have to inoculate the entire crew.

'I'm going to start you on some generic antivirals until we get a definitive diagnosis' Doctor Styron gestured for him to put his shirt back on. 'As soon as we've got you settled, I'll start isolating the strain so we can develop a vaccine and arrange for everyone you've had contact with to come today to come back in for testing.'

Alice led him to one of the empty isolation rooms at the end of sickbay. She left him to get changed while she went to find one of the vampires they called nurses. Several hypos and two vials of blood later, McCoy was finally left alone with nothing but the ceiling to keep him company. It wasn't far from how he'd planned to spend his evening.

…..

'We received a message from starbase 7 half an hour ago.' Christine said, injecting his third dose of antiviral medication. 'Alerting us that they've had an outbreak of Andorian shingles.'

_Dammit. _McCoy thought, resisting the urge to scratch. Everything was blurry.

Over night the rash had spread to cover one side of his face and chest but the blotches had become large painful blisters filled with blood.

He rubbed his eyes. Man, did they itch.

'Stop that.' Christine chastised.

McCoy blinked, trying to clear his vision but it just made the blurriness worse, turning the rose coloured tint an unpleasant of red. Something trailed down his face. It felt like tears but when he reached up to touch it, his fingers came away smeared with blood.

_Dammit._

He didn't realise he'd said that out loud until Chapel looked back over and noticed what he was staring at, 'I'll go get M'Benga.'

McCoy closed his eyes to numb the stinging. Several minutes later he heard Christine return accompanied by another set of footsteps.

'I'm need to examine your eyes.' Geoff warned.

Leonard reopened his eyes, having to blink several times to dispel the heavy film of blood that now coated them. Vaguely he could see M'Benga peering in at him, then he produced a small torch. McCoy cringed at the bright light stinging his eyes. He could feel the blood streaming down his face as his eyes watered. Eventually Geoff dropped the penlight, allowing McCoy to sigh in relief. 'I'm going to have to bandage your eyes to protect them.'

...

With his eyes constantly shut, it was difficult to differentiate between waking and sleeping. McCoy had little to tell the passing of time by except the come and goings of the nurses. At some point, the shift had changed twice because Doctor Styron had come and gone so now M'Benga was back on duty.

Leonard hadn't realised how much he relied on his sight until it was taken away from him. McCoy felt sick and dizzy. No matter how still he lay, the biobed still felt like it was moving underneath him.

He took some deep breaths, willing his stomach to calm down; Throwing up was not an experience he wanted to try while unable to see. Unfortunately, it seemed that his body had other ideas.

Bits and bobs clattered to the floor as McCoy flailed about blindly for the least offensive place to throw up. Unable to find the basin he hoped had been left there, his hand hit the railing. In the last second, McCoy heaved himself up so that he could vomit over the side of the bed. He cringed at the sound of his stomach contents splattering on the floor, embarrassed that one of his poor nurses was going to have to clean it up, but his only other choice would have been to throw up on himself. He barely heard the door open and the two sets of footsteps enter.

One of the nurses pushed a basin into his hand. Leonard clutched the basin tightly, afraid that if he let go, he wouldn't be able to find it again when he needed it. The action seemed to have come a little bit late. McCoy doubted that there was anything left to throw up; it felt like everything he'd eaten over the last few days was now decorating the isolation room floor.

'I'm giving you something to calm your stomach.' Styron said, hypo-spraying his neck.

'How are you feeling now?' She asked after giving the medication a couple of minutes to take effect.

'Miserable,' He muttered, slumping back against the fire that was his back. He still felt sick and he was still dizzy. 'Spinning.'

He heard the other doctor pause, 'Vertigo can happen.'

McCoy knew what M'Benga wasn't saying; he was a doctor too. While vertigo wasn't unheard of, it was rare and most likely meant he had lost a lot of blood.

The exertion had left his back screaming in renewed protest, like adding fuel to flames. McCoy shuffled on the biobed to try and get more comfortable. He cried out as the fabric covering the bed scraped against the blisters on his back. Several felt as if they popped, undoubtedly leaving tails of blood across the sheets.

_Wait until you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian Shingles, lets see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs start bleeding._

He'd told Jim all those years ago how space was just too damn dangerous. Not that it had done him any good this time around. He wanted to kill whoever had given him this damn virus.

Later though. He was too tired right now.

…..

The door swished open, causing Leonard to frown. It was too early for his next dose and he didn't know who else it could be. 'Bones, you awake?'

'You shouldn't be in here.' McCoy chastised. 'Go away.' The last thing he wanted was to be room mates with a sick Jim. It was an experience he'd had before, on more than one occasion, and was not one he wanted to try again. Secretly though, he was excited at the prospect of company.

'Hey, Doctor Styron said I could.' There was a scraping sound which Leonard realised was Jim dragging a chair along the floor. 'For once, I'm not allergic to the vaccination.'

Leonard hated to think what he looked like right now. The blisters were starting to burst and scab over in number, frequently leaving the sheets underneath him sticky with congealed blood. He'd gained an IV in his sleep to counteract the blood loss.

Every now and then, the blood would dry, gluing the fabric to the angry welts that coated his body. Then McCoy would move, painfully ripping off any clots that had formed, causing the blisters to bleed all over. He probably looked like one of those zombies from the old 20th century horror movies Nurse Matthews liked to watch.

'She also said I could give you your PADD, on the condition that you don't work' Jim handed him the device. 'I thought you might be bored, so I had Uhura download a couple of audiobooks onto it.' McCoy didn't bother pointing out that he couldn't see to operate it, deciding that figuring out how to use it would give him something to do. Instead, he listened as Jim filled him in with the latest gossip on what was happening outside of his four walled prison.

…..

Even with the audiobooks Jim had given him, McCoy had found the silence of the isolation room disturbing and lonely. He'd enjoyed it when Jim and the other senior officers had popped in for a visit but they couldn't stay forever. Sooner or later, they would have to return to their duties and McCoy was once again left alone in silence with only his own thoughts for company. As soon as he was no longer contagious, Alice had agreed to move him into the noisier main bay.

McCoy felt his way along the wall towards the bathroom. Over the previous two weeks, he had come to learn his sickbay like the back of his hand. He knew it took exactly three steps from his biobed to the next. Four steps from that one to the wall and then a further sixteen to the bathroom. He could now also eat on his own without spilling most of it down himself.

Leonard swore as his foot collided with something solid, nearly tripping him over. As he felt downwards to see what it wad, he cursed which ever idiot had left the storage container in the middle of the floor.

Maybe one of the nurses had done it deliberately, as punishment for driving them up the wall and being constantly under their feet. It wouldn't be for much longer now. He'd be back on duty and giving them orders in a couple of days time; the bandages were coming off later that afternoon and for McCoy, that moment he couldn't come any sooner. He was never going to take his sight for granted again.


	19. Skin disorder

**19\. Skin Disorder**

Summary: Bones is unbearably itchy.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Hello to everyone out there still reading! Please review!**

'It's all your fault, Jim!' McCoy fumed, absent mindedly scratching his stomach as they walked. He was battered, bruised and covered from head to toe in mud. He was also unbearably itchy.

'My fault?' Jim asked, 'Why's it always my fault?'

'Captain, as we have already established on several times previously, the doctor is correct.' Spock interjected before the captain could argue to the contrary. 'It was your actions that startled the herd, was it not?'

'Hey, how was I supposed to know the mammoths don't like loud noises?' Jim protested. 'It wasn't like I dropped the crate on purpose!' Leonard decided that it wasn't worth pointing out that from what he remembered of the incident, Jim had. During the return journey, he had come to the conclusion that he had spent way more than his fair share of time running for his life. Nearly every single one of those times had been because of something Jim had said or done. The kid was going to turn him prematurely grey one of these days.

They'd been helping to set up a research outpost in a remote section of Terrax-11 when they'd stopped to admire a heard of Jevarii, largely peaceful, mammoth like creatures that grazed among the scattered trees. Spock and McCoy had been watching the herd for several minutes, quietly discussing the creatures' evolutionary characteristics, when the Captain had come up behind them. Completely oblivious to the herd, Jim had dropped the crate he was carrying and started complaining loudly about his back.

The effect the sudden loud noise had on the Jevarii was instantaneous. The giant animals freaked. McCoy would have expected the creatures to run away from the loud noise, not towards it as the spooked heard had done. Suddenly McCoy, Spock and the Captain had found themselves in immediate danger as a herd of elephants, the size of small houses, bore down on them. The three of them had completed the only logical action, they'd run.

McCoy was scratching furiously at the rash adorning his arms as they walked into sickbay. The itchiness had gotten much worse on the shuttle ride back to the Enterprise. It also felt like it had spread. M'Benga and Chapel were ready and waiting for them. Maybe someone from the shuttle bay had called ahead or heard Jim coming. It was more likely that they'd been prepared for the away team to run into some form of trouble; this was Jim they were talking after all.

Deciding to take the path of least resistance, Leonard followed hopped up onto the first biobed and pulled off his shirt. The sooner he got on with it, the sooner Geoff could give him something to relieve the intense itching.

He saw Jim wince at the angry mess that covered every inch of skin underneath his shirt and on his arms. McCoy couldn't see his face or his back but he expected they were in a similar sorry state. Vibrant crimson spider webs traced raised blotches across his skin, still heavily pockmarked with scars from his recent bout of Andorian shingles.

'Urishol-induced contact dermatitis.' M'Benga eventually concluded upon finishing his scan. It was the same conclusion McCoy had come to on the tedious journey back. Jim just frowned.

Leonard continued to scratch his stomach, completely ignoring the disapproving looks the other doctor was giving him. 'Poison ivy, Jim'

Across the room, Jim scratched his arm. McCoy resisted the urge to tell him off, deciding it would be undoubtedly hypocritical considering he was doing exactly the same thing. Jim and Spock both had the same on their arms and legs, minus the scabs, but to a much lesser degree. McCoy was surprised that for once, Jim hadn't gone into anaphylaxis. In fact, the Captain seemed to be the least affected out of all of them. 'What did you do, Bones, bathe in the stuff?'

McCoy glared at Jim. Everything _itched_; McCoy looked and felt like one giant hive.

'Something like that.' He grumbled.

'While we running down the embankment, Doctor McCoy tripped and fell.' Spock said. 'I do believe he rolled through several large patches of those purple bushes before reaching the bottom. You're recommendation's doctor?'

'Decontamination with cold water prior to revaluation.' M'Benga replied, looking towards McCoy for approval. 'Urishol's oil based, so I'd also recommend using liberal amounts of soap.'

…..

'Bones, I'm itchy.' Jim whined for the twentieth time. McCoy didn't know what Jim was complaining about. The rash covering Jim's arms was tiny compared to the one covering pretty much Leonard's entire body.

The first couple of times, McCoy had been civil, then his patience had worn out. He'd tried shouting to little avail, that had just encouraged him. Jim seemed to find winding him up funny. Now McCoy simply ignored him, trying not to focus on how utterly miserable he felt.

M'Benga had dosed him with so many hyposprays, Leonard was sure he could add giant bruise to his list of ailments, yet none of them seemed to have worked. He was still extremely uncomfortable. If you combined that with Jim's incessant wining and you were left with a chief medical officer who was taking grumpy to a whole new level. Needless to say, the nurses were giving their end of sickbay a wide birth; He'd already made two of the nurses cry. He was going to hear hell from Christine when she found out.

'Indeed, it is unpleasant.' Spock murmured in agreement, not looking up from his thorough inspection of the rash covering his own hand. The Vulcan seemed to be treating the entire experience as one of his science experiments.

McCoy rolled over restlessly, too hot and itchy to get comfortable enough to sleep, even if Jim quit moaning long enough for him to drift off..

When he'd had Andorian Shingles, Leonard had been uncomfortable but this was somehow worse; The Shingles had been painful but the poison ivy _itched_. The urge to scratch was so overwhelming McCoy felt like he was crawling out of his skin until he did. Any relief was short lived; scratching only made the itch move, like jumbo fleas jumping about on his body. It was a never ending cycle of scratching and being itchy.

The good news was, he didn't seem to be getting worse but he also wasn't getting any better. The plant appeared to be resistant to nearly all of the typical treatments. Geoff and Alice were both working on developing a new ointment to relieve the itching but it was going to take a while. In the mean time, there wasn't a lot else the doctor could do except wait it out and let his body do it's thing.

'I think I'm allergic to this stuff.'

_No shit._ McCoy thought, not in the mood to explain the whole thing was one giant allergic reaction to a toxin produced by the plants they'd fled through. Instead, he buried his head under his pillow to drown out the noise. Unfortunately he was forced to re-emerge less than a minute later because he was too warm, just in time to hear Jim open his mouth again, 'I'm _bored_.'

_Dammit, couldn't the kid be quiet for five minutes._

The only thing that kept McCoy from throwing something at Jim was the only thing to hand happened to be his pillow. If he threw that, then he would have to chose between getting up to go and retrieve it or go without, neither of which he was prepared to do.

'Captain, you have already informed us no less than thirteen times.' Spock's voice had taken on that tone it developed when he too, was finding the Captain trying his patience. Leonard could hear Jim opening his mouth to protest when Spock interrupted again. 'I believe this experience would be more tolerable if you were to, keep your opinions to yourself.'

Jim sighed and flopped back onto the biobed.

_Infant._ McCoy thought, although relived that Jim was, at least, no longer talking.

The silence didn't last long.

'_But I'm really itchy_.'

'Shut up, Jim.'


	20. Sleep Deprivation

**20\. Sleep Deprivation**

Summary: The absence of sleep had caused the days to blur together.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Can't believe we're on Chapter 20, it's come around so quickly. Not many left to go :( .As several people have asked, an expansion of the meld chapter (17. psychological trauma) is in the works. It's going to be a separate story and I'll post it as soon as the first chapter's done. Anyway, here's the latest installment, hope you like it, please review!**

McCoy scrubbed at his eyes, beyond exhausted. He'd managed to catch a couple of hours sleep a couple of days ago, only to be woken by the alarms that had heralded the third attack. The sound of gunfire had accompanied the next wave of casualties. Wounded had flooded sickbay faster than the medical staff could treat them.

There wasn't a single member of crew who wasn't running on empty.

The crew of the Enterprise had been through some rough times, the Narada disaster being one of them, bit this was by far one of the worst. They'd been on red alert for what, four, five days? Spock would know, he always knew. Leonard on the other hand had lost count. The attacks had been never ending and the absence of sleep had caused the days blur together.

Each time the Enterprise had managed to fight the enemy vessels off but always at a cost. The constant barrage of fire had taken its toll both on the ship and its crew. Morale was barely lifting off of rock bottom. Supplies were running just as low, they were out of pretty much everything.

Jim had come in early on during the previous wave, impaled by a piece of bulkhead that had fallen when a direct shot had hit the bridge.

Without the only functional operating room occupied, McCoy had been forced to open Jim up in the middle of sickbay to save his friends life. Needless to say, with only a makeshift screen between him an the rest of the ward, conditions were less than optimal.

_Damned if you do, damned if you don't._ Leonard had had to make a decision and if he had to do it again, he would make the same one. They couldn't reverse death but they could treat a post-operative infection and any other complications that could arise from the less than sterile environment. That was if they hadn't run out of antibiotics Jim wasn't allergic too by then.

In between patients, McCoy ran his hand through his hair and wearily looked over at the unconscious form that was the captain. He didn't know how much longer he and the crew could go on like this. Damn kid was breathing but still an unnatural shade of grey. Leonard wished he could do more, but his hands were tied.

At one point, the Captain had been haemorrhaging so badly McCoy had had to send the nurse assisting him out to find volunteers willing to donate blood. All that was left in the bank was a couple of bags of AB positive and the pints kept in reserve specially for Spock.

The worst thing was that up until the point he'd passed out, Jim had been unmercifully concious and in pain because McCoy didn't have any sedatives that the Captain wasn't allergic too. The doctor hadn't been able to give him anything stronger than a mild painkiller, else risk a reaction they just didn't have the resources to deal with.

In the last twenty four hours, they'd had to resort to emergency measures; if it wasn't going to kill the patient it had to wait. It went against all of McCoy's instincts but that was battlefield triage for you. For all of modern medicine, they'd been reduced to working in conditions were not far reaching barbaric; His sickbay and the corridors beyond resembled a world war two field hospital.

At some point the enemy ships had retreated for good and the Enterprise was left to limp home. By some small miracle, Scotty seemed to be holding the ship together with nothing but spit and prayers. McCoy would have offered him some surgical tape to help, if they hadn't run out around the same time they'd used up the last pint of O negative.

The emergency distress beacon had been transmitting for ever since, as the enterprise slowly limped to the nearest star base with nothing but half-broken sub-light engines at their disposal. It was the aftermath of the Narada disaster all over again, only this time it didn't feel like they had one.

Each time he would patch someone up, only to find two more waiting. McCoy felt like they were trying to drain the ocean with a tea cup. Every now an then, they would finally get on top of the situation only for the next round of firing to begin and they would have to start all over again. It was relentless.

Spock had sent every uninjured crewman who wasn't already helping with the repairs, or defending the ship, to help out but it was like a putting a plaster on a gunshot wound. There was little they could do to help when McCoy had nowhere near the supplies or equipment needed to treat every single injured person. What the Doctor would have given for just half a dozen more dermal regenerators.

The USS Franklin was en-route to provide emergency assistance and supplies but it would three days at least before they were in range. Until the rescue ship reached, the Enterprise was on its own, in the black. Several time McCoy had found himself wondering how many more patients he would lose before that help arrived.

Eleven crewman. That was what the death toll currently stood at, both the ones McCoy couldn't save and the ones that never made it. There would be more, once everything died down and they could take full stock of who was missing, trapped in areas the repair crews hadn't been able to reach. Then there was the poor souls who'd still been on deck two when the hull had blown. If you asked him, eleven was too many already.

Leonard vaguely remembered thinking about getting some sleep several hours ago but then the Captain had come in and all thoughts about getting some rest had shot out the nearest airlock faster than warp 10. Between the stress and lack of sleep Leonard didn't want to think about how high his blood pressure was. He was a doctor, not a machine. Even he couldn't go without sleep forever.

He was dead on his feet. Forget sleeping in his own quarters, Leonard wanted to collapse onto the first vacant space he found. A horizontal space would have been preferred but McCoy was well beyond the point of being picky. Unfortunately every chair, bed and flat space nearby was currently occupied with injured crewmen.

As he stood up from inspecting a patient's bandages, the room spun slightly. Leonard reached out a hand to steady himself. He couldn't remember when he'd last eaten either, some point more recently than when he'd slept but that wasn't much help.

'Sit down before you fall down.' Chapel chastised, making him jump. He hadn't noticed her coming up behind her. 'We're busy enough without having to worry about tripping over you passed out on the floor.'

She dragged him firmly towards a recently vacated cot in the corner. McCoy started to protest that there were patients who needed it more than him but shut up when Christine glared at him. 'You're no good to anyone right now. The only reason I'm not kicking you out of here is that I don't think you'd make it to your quarters on your own.'

McCoy could only blink wearily at her. His head felt heavy. Suddenly closing his sounded like a really good idea. He was so tired, he barely heard her order, 'Get some sleep, Leonard'


	21. Strained Muscle

**21\. Strained Muscle**

Summary: Bones was getting too old for sleeping on the sofa.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters.**

**Enjoy, please review!**

McCoy had been uncomfortable all day. What had started as twinge is back had blown into a full on deep-seated stiffness. The worst thing was that he didn't have anyone to blame for his discomfort but himself.

There had been an explosion in engineering during beta shift, severely injuring several crewmen. As the doctor on call, McCoy had been called back in to help Doctor Styron with the casualties, having only just left after staying late to finish his paper work. One of the crewman had received a severe head injury and needed immediate surgery to stem the bleeding into the Ensign's brain before they could even think about treating the rest of his injuries.

After six hours of surgery, it had been some point into gamma when McCoy had finally emerged from the Operating room. Passing the Ensign's post-operative care off to M'Benga, McCoy had stumbled into his office and collapsed onto the sofa, desperate to catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before he was due to be back on duty in less than seven hours.

Long gone were the days when he could complete a double shift on only a few hours sleep. Leonard was no spring chicken and his body was determined to make sure he knew it. Despite trying to hide his pain, McCoy was sure that he'd been hobbling around like an old man all day. His back always gave him grief whenever he spent the night on the sofa. Every time Leonard would vow to stop sleeping there, yet he kept on doing it.

It was the reports that sent McCoy over the edge, in search of a hypospray of muscle relaxant. He would have preferred to be done for the night hours ago but sickbay had been busy all week, resulting in the accumulation of a rather large pile all of which needed reading before deadline for tomorrows transmission.

When he finally found the drugs he was looking for, He silently cursed at whichever idiot had put them on the bottom shelf. Steeling himself, Leonard groaned and started to lean over.

'Back giving you a spot of bother, Bones?'

McCoy startled upright, stifling a cry as his back twinged in protest of the sudden movement. His hand flew instinctively to the source of the pain. 'Dammit, Jim.'

'You coming to dinner?'

_Dammit, he'd forgotten about that._

He'd agreed to meet Spock and the Captain for dinner at Lunchtime, or more precisely, Jim had decided and McCoy had been too distracted to argue. Obviously Leonard had made a face because Jim laughed. 'Spock said you'd forgotten.'

Choosing to leave the muscle relaxants where they were, rather than make a fool of himself by attempting to pick them again, McCoy turned to go. The entire way out he kept hoping for an emergency to come in, a reason not to go other than he just wasn't in the mood. Unfortunately, Sickbay was as busy as it had been all day, completely dead. You could practically see the tumble weed drifting across the room.

Apart from the small handful of on duty nurses, milling around the nurses station with nothing better to do than gossip, Doctor Styron was the only one in sight. She'd pulled up a chair to one of the bio beds and had half a dozen PADDs spread out in front of her. He guessed Styron was working on her research project, looking at the effectiveness of the standard decontamination gels against the various space-faring micro-organisms that the ship encountered. She looked up as they neared and smiled, 'Heading off for the night?'

McCoy scowled, not in the mood for chatting, let alone with Alice's unnaturally sunny personality. Jim on the other hand, had other ideas, 'Don't mind him, he's grumpy because his back hurts.'

'I'm not surprised, all that slouching you do in your chair.' Alice said cheerfully. McCoy could swear that the grumpier he got, the more peppy she became, or maybe he just noticed it more because it grated on his nerves then. It was the same with Jim, except Leonard knew that Jim did it to get a rise out of him. 'Want me to take a look?'

'I'm fine.' He grumbled, glaring at Jim. If he didn't know better, he'd say Jim actually liked getting hypoed.

What McCoy wanted was for them to actually leave, so that he could go to his quarters and be alone. It was just a simple muscle strain. All he needed was a hot shower and a nights sleep in a proper bed; the sooner dinner was finished, the sooner Leonard could get those.

…..

McCoy knew it was going to be another long day when he woke and his back ached before he'd done anything. As a doctor, McCoy knew that the best thing for it was to just keep on moving. Trouble was, moving _hurt._

It was easy to underestimate how much work your back did. Every time you stood, sat, turned your head, moved an arm or a leg, the muscles in your back were working. The fibres were constantly adjusting, contracting or relaxing to keep you upright and balance. It was only when it went that you realised how much you took it for granted.

McCoy went to sit up. The pain that shot through his back instantly made him think twice about moving.

_Ah, hell. _

McCoy silently screamed, biting his lip against the spasm. He'd hoped that a night in a proper bed would help but his back was worse.

Leonard looked around the room, assessing his options. The hot shower the previous night had helped immensely. He just about had time, even if it meant missing breakfast. He could do it.

As he went to swing his legs over the edge so that he could sit up, a spasm in his back threw him off to one side. The result was him rolling over, instead of sitting up, landing in a dishevelled heap on the floor.

Leonard found himself staring up at the edge of the bed; it seemed so far away. He didn't think he could get back up if he tried.

With a little manoeuvering and a lot of pain, he managed to get into a crawling position. Deciding that the Comm panel was closer, he set off across the room. A cold sweat broke out across his skin. His back was on fire.

He slowly crawled towards the comm panel, each movement sending waves of agony through his back. McCoy made it halfway across the floor before collapsing, simply in too much pain to continue.

He lay there, panting heavily, unsure if he wanted to cry, puke, pass out or a combination of all three. He looked warily over at the panel, which now seemed miles away. McCoy couldn't move and couldn't call for help; He was stuck.

Even if he did make it over there, the panel was over a meter in the air. Leonard had been so focused on getting to it, he hadn't given thought to how he was actually going to _reach _it. As if on cue, the panel chirped, no doubt announcing that sickbay was trying to get hold of him. The call eventually stopped ringing when it went unanswered.

_Dammit, Dammit, Dammit._

The agony was paralysing. His back was well beyond the realm of hot water. The only thing that was going to get him off of the floor was drugs.

_Muscle relaxants? Painkillers? Even good old paracetamol and ibuprofen would be nice. _McCoy thought, looking up at the ceiling. Even if he did have a hypospray of something in his quarters, Leonard didn't think he'd be able to reach it. He'd been able to roll onto his back but that was it. McCoy was done.

He didn't know how long he lay there; a while probably. Leonard was pretty sure alpha shift had started a while ago. If he lay there long enough, the pain would lessen slightly, only to reignite when he tried moving. All he managed to succeed in was moving a foot closer to the panel.

After lying on the floor for so long, the door chiming was music to his ears. 'Come in.'

The door swished open but whoever was there didn't identify who they were for several minutes.

'You're an idiot.' Leonard opened his eyes to find Christine standing over him with her hands on her hips. 'I know for a fact you slept on that sofa yesterday.'

He should have known she'd know. Nothing in sickbay ever escaped past Christine. McCoy didn't know why he bothered to try hiding anything, he always seemed to get lectured anyway. He just wished she could save it until after he'd received the muscle relaxant.

He was faintly embarrassed that he was still wearing the Boxers and T-shirt he'd worn to bed but in the grand scheme of things, his clothes weren't on his list of priorities. Right at that point of time his first and foremost priority was that it hurt to move_._

Leonard turned his head to get a better look at her, grimacing as the movement reawakened the fire in his back. This halted anything Chapel had been about to say; instantly she was down by his side, scanning him with the tricorder.

'It's just a strain.' She said when the cycle finished. 'I'm going to give you a muscle relaxant.' McCoy could have told her that without a tricorder, although considering she only had the one hypospray with her, she'd expected that.

The hypospray stung but the relief that followed was worth it.

* * *

**Notes**

paracetamol = acetaminophen (British - American translation)


	22. Surgery

**22\. Surgery**

Summary: Bones hated surgery but now he was left with little choice.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Please enjoy and review!**

M'Benga had taken one look at the back of his throat, seen the white pus-filled spots and diagnosed tonsillitis. He'd taken swabs just in case. Those had come back later that day, confirming that, as they had expected, it was Strep. _Again, dammit._

McCoy wanted to blame it on all those patients breathing germs over him every day but it had never been a problem in years. Realistically, his immune system had just been abnormally rubbish of late. Recently, it seemed like he caught everything that passed through sickbay.

Leonard was medicated and settled under the blankets of his bed when Jim knocked on the door. He was sick enough to feel miserable but, for once, not bad enough to warrant a stay in sickbay. M'Benga had released him to his quarters on the condition that McCoy took his medications and kept drinking enough to stay hydrated.

'You know, if you didn't want to come out partying with me, you could have just said.' Jim grinned, slouching into McCoy's desk chair. Leonard groaned and buried his head further under his sheets.

'G'way Jim.' McCoy grumbled. He coughed, the motion feeling like sand paper against his inflamed throat. He took a sip, wincing as the action of swallowing but finding brief relief against the rawness in his throat.

'It's not too late to change your mind.' Jim said when he'd finished. 'Maybe some R&amp;R would do you some good.' Leonard snorted and then promptly regretted it.

_Are you out of your corn-fed mind?_

As well as breaking half a dozen regulations regarding the containment of infectious organisms, look how his last round of shore leave had ended up; Going on shore leave was just asking for an opportunistic infection. McCoy might as well wear a flashing neon sign that says 'Party's here Pathogens! Free human!'

'I'm fine.' McCoy rasped. Even if Jim did somehow manage to fool the bio-scanners and convince Geoff to let him go, Leonard could imagine it; the places Jim liked to frequent were far from quiet, even before Jim managed to attract trouble. No, he just wanted to sleep, which he could do perfectly well in his own bed.

'Go.' He told Jim. 'Enjoy your shore leave.'

McCoy was already drifting off when Jim left and the door slid shut behind him. Leonard doubted he was going to miss anything good anyway.

Of three cases of Tonsillitis he'd in the last two months alone, this was the worst. McCoy slept solidly for the next day and a half; His sleep was only punctuated by the alarm, reminding him to take his next dose of antibiotics.

Leonard didn't like sleeping so much, it made the time feel like it was slipping away from him but he was feeling too rubbish to do much else; Sleep was necessary for the body to heal.

At some point while he'd slept the pain had changed; one side was hurting more than the other, spreading all the way up to his ear. When he woke, his jaw was stiff and swollen.

McCoy shivered, feverish from the infection. He drew the blankets tighter around him. Thankfully, it was still early and the corridors were empty as he stumbled the familiar route to sickbay. Leonard knew he probably looked silly, wandering the halls of Enterprise wearing nightclothes and his blanket, sporting a serious case of bed-hair. He was feeling to sick to change into proper clothes, only to have to change again when M'Benga inevitably confined him to sickbay. At least this way he got to keep his own pyjamas rather than having to wear one of those horrible gowns.

When he got there, McCoy didn't have to wait long after stepping through the doors. He let M'Benga feel the glands behind his ears and under his jaw, run several scans and then finally stick a wooden stick McCoy's mouth in order to take a good old-fashioned look.

'Peritonsillar abscess.' M'Benga said, removing the depressor from McCoy's mouth. It was a known but rare complication of tonsillitis. A Peritonsillar abscess was also serious enough to need surgery. 'They're going to have to come out, Leonard.'

_Dammit._

He wanted to grumble but, having lost his voice, couldn't voice his opinion. Despite having had tonsillitis numerous times over the last year, Leonard had always strongly fought any suggestion of a tonsillectomy, preferring to watch and wait. Now he was left with little choice in the matter.

It didn't help knowing that, if the roles were reversed and McCoy was the doctor, he'd make exactly the same call. If left unchecked, the swelling could block his airway and start to affect his breathing; everything his colleague had said was backed with impeccable medical logic. Leonard just didn't like surgery.

Eventually, McCoy descended to the only forms of communication left to him. He scowled, expressing is displeasure, but shuffled back onto the biobed none the less, pausing only to wipe away the string of saliva trailing down his chin.

He hated that he was drooling like an infant but the abscess was making it almost impossible to swallow. To make matters worse, his glands were producing even more saliva than usual. His only option was to let the spit run out of his mouth or choke on it.

M'Benga smiled, 'I'll start getting everything ready.'

…..

The procedure had been relatively short and simple. Recovering from the anaesthetic afterwards had been the hard part. McCoy had never reacted well to being under anaesthesia; the first thing he'd done upon coming around was vomit; all that he'd had to bring up was a couple of mouthfuls of bile but it had left him feeling like he'd swallowed a cupful of broken glass. McCoy wanted to go back to his quarters but he couldn't do that until he lost the IV. The fluids were going to be his companion until he was drinking enough to not need them. As much as he wanted to lose the IV, he didn't feel like drinking; he was still having problems swallowing.

Although M'Benga had drained the abscess and removed his tonsils, there was still some swelling to go down. Every time McCoy took a sip, most of it would come dribbling back out before he could swallow it. Chapel had brought him some ice chips earlier, which had soothed his sore throat for a short period of time but the now sat abandoned, its contents having melted.

Leonard was still groggy from the anaesthesia and the pain medications were starting to wear off. He was tired, both from the infection and the toll of being sedated; as McCoy had frequently reminded Jim, unconsciousness was not the same as sleep.

He heard Jim before he saw him; Alice had taken a leaf out of Christine's book and pulled the curtains around his bed, so that he'd stop back seat diagnosing her patients. Ensign Summers had come in with a huge bruise and was point blank refusing to tell Doctor Styron how he'd gotten it. Even funnier was that Lieutenant Walters had come in an hour before that to be treated for the exact same rash M'Benga had treated Summers for three days ago.

'Where's Bones?' Jim demanded.

Beyond the curtain, he heard Alice sigh. 'Captain, I assure I am perfectly capable of treating any conditions you may have.'

That made McCoy pause. _Dammit, What had the kid done this time?What was she seeing that he couldn't?_

His questions didn't have to go unanswered for long. Seconds later Jim, obviously having had enough of Styron's inquisition, pushed through the curtains and hastily closing the curtain behind him.

Leonard barely had time to register that Jim was only wearing a towel around his waist, before the towel was dropped to the floor.

McCoy frowned at the virulent blue pustules competing for space. That was new a one.

'Dammit Jim, can't we have just one uneventful shore leave?'


	23. Viral

**23\. Viral**

Summary: Bones is under the weather.

**Warning: May contain mild profanity.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Apologies for the delay in posting, my Internet's been down. I can't believe that there's only two more chapters to go! :( **

**Please enjoy and review.**

McCoy decided to do the Captain first so that he wouldn't know it was coming and have time to run, so naturally Jim had known.

Leonard didn't understand why Jim felt the need to make it so difficult. Every time his the captain's physical rolled around, Jim turned something that should have taken less than twenty minutes into a three hour long wild goose chaise across every deck of the Enterprise.

He'd had to traipse all the way around the ship before he found Jim's hiding place. It had been Scotty who had finally ratted the captain out, following McCoy's threat to remove all forms of sandwich off of the engineer's diet card. It had been a low blow but Leonard had been running out of options and desperate; he had better things to do than play cat and mouse with Jim.

Spock had been far easier; Leonard had sent the first officer a time and he'd turned up, bang on time.

'You're blood pressure's a little higher than I'd like,' McCoy said, reading the display as he waved the probe over Spock's neck. 'I don't think it's anything to be worried about though.' Working with Jim on a daily basis was enough to raise anyone's blood pressure.

'Any headaches, nosebleeds, double...' A wave of light-headedness washed over him. The room suddenly felt uncomfortably warm. He needed to sit down.

'Doctor McCoy, are you alright?' Spock asked. Damn green-blooded hobgoblin. Nothing ever seemed to escape him.

'I'm fine.' He snapped, a little more harshly than necessary. Spots speckled his vision, but cleared when he blinked them away. There was only two more tests to go and then he was finished. He could sit down then. 'Headaches, nosebleeds, double vision or shortness of breath?'

'Negative, Doctor.'

McCoy reached for the next piece of equipment.

Suddenly another wave of dizziness overcame him. The spots were back and more persistent this tome. Leonard put a hand out to steady himself but it was too late. The last thing he saw was Spock's hands reaching out to catch him.

…..

McCoy came around on the floor. It was like looking at the world from inside a fish tank; he could see and hear everything going on around him but couldn't remember how to make his body move. Nurse Jones, who was feeling for his pulse, put down his wrist.

Between the two of them, they maneuvered him onto the biobed.

The movement sent the room into a dizzying spin, forcing him to close his eyes.

As soon as his body touched down, the monitor bonged. Jones turned the volume off. 'Blood pressure's a little low and I don't need the biobed to tell me your temperature's higher than it should be. Still dizzy?'

McCoy nodded weakly, then grabbed the the sheets tightly as the movement made his stomach clench miserably. When the worst of the sensation passed, he flopped one hand above his head, needing to feel the steadiness of the biobed above him. The other hand curved protectively around his stomach.

McCoy groaned.

'Going to be sick?' Jones asked.

Leonard thought about it, keeping his eyes firmly shut as he breathed through the nausea.

'Not right now.' He said eventually. His stomach had settled back to the dull grumbling it had been dong all day but after that last little episode, he wouldn't count out the possibility completely.

'Did you hit your head?' Leonard didn't know; He couldn't remember anything between starting to fall and waking up on the floor. His head didn't hurt but that didn't mean he hadn't hit it. McCoy hesitated, unsure how to answer.

'The doctor was not injured during his fall.' Spock confirmed for him 'I caught him before he could hit the floor.'

Nick picked up the wrist above his head and felt for a pulse. 'How long have you been feeling lousy?'

McCoy didn't answer; he didn't have the energy to lie.

Truth was, he hadn't been feeling well all day but had too much work to do to sit around feeling sorry for himself. Recently he'd not only had several illnesses but had Jim dragging him off on away missions left right and centre. He'd gotten severely behind on the crews annual physicals and now had Starfleet medical breathing down his neck, demanding why they weren't done.

'Commander, could you fetch Nurse Chapel? She should be in Medlab 2.' Jones asked before turning back to McCoy. 'Are you okay if I start running a couple of blood tests?'

McCoy just stuck out his arm as way of consent. The blood tests were standard protocol and Christine would just ask for them to be done anyway.

As Jones prepared for the blood draw, he tried to ignore the sensations of prodding and poking. McCoy resisted the urge to look. He would never say it out loud but despite inflicting needles upon the poor crewmen that crossed his threshold every day, Leonard had never liked the damn things. He was fine when it was someone else but when he was the one receiving the needle, it was a totally different story.

It was a relief when Nurse Jones was finished, leaving McCoy to curl up underneath the blanket the nurse brought him.

'You're determined to keep me from completing my dissertation.' McCoy blearily opened his eyes to see Christine approaching with Spock. He quickly shut his eyes again after the spinning room set his stomach churning. McCoy pulled the blanket further up his face, curling further into the fabric.

'You look like Hell.' She said, turning on the tricorder. He didn't need to open his eyes to know that she was frowning at him; He could tell she was trying to get a rise out of him, to see just how sick he was. One of the first things you learnt as a doctor was that the ones that complained the loudest were usually the healthiest; It was when patient's didn't grumble or protest you had to be worried. Things were serious if they didn't have the strength to pretend that they were fine.

'Sorry.' He mumbled. Now that he was laying down and the cat was out of the bag, Leonard just wanted to be left alone to sleep and feel sorry for himself. He felt dreadful and he didn't feel like pretending otherwise.

'Thrown up?' Chapel asked while the scan ran.

'Not yet.' McCoy answered quietly after a few minutes. The way had stomach was now somersaulting suggested it was going to happen sooner or later, though. Thankfully Christine heard his unspoken words. Leaving the tricorder to finish scanning, she went and retrieved a plastic basin from one of the nearby cupboards, setting it next to him within easy reach.

'I'll add nausea to list.' She said as McCoy reached out and clutched the bowl tightly. Next to him, the tricorder stopped scanning. Christine studied the readout's for a moment or two. 'Looks like it's just a simple virus and exhaustion.'

While McCoy should have been relieved that it wasn't anything to serious but was a little preoccupied with his stomach threatening revolt. He missed what Chapel said was saying as his stomach lurched violently, bile rising up his throat. Leonard swallowed, trying to keep the contents of his stomach down as he flailed about, trying to get upright. His hand flew instinctively to his mouth.

_Ah, hell._

Thankfully, Christine realised what he was trying to do and helped him up, hauling upright just in time to lose the battle with his stomach.

When he was finished, he was so dizzy that he couldn't see straight. It was only hands holding him that stopped him from falling the face first into the basin. Strangely he felt better having thrown up. His stomach was still churning but seemed satisfied for the moment..

'I'm going to give you something for the vomiting and fever.' Christine said as she brought the head of the biobed up too meet him. Someone pried the basin from his hands before the smell could set him off again and handed him a cup of water to rinse with. The nausea wasn't so bad once the taste of vomit wasn't lingering in his mouth.

McCoy's head lolled against the biobed as he closed his eyes once more. The sting of the first hypospray was closely followed by the hiss of the second. Within minutes, he could feel the drugs pulling at the edge of his vision and needed little persuasion to let them drag him under into sleep.

…..

Whatever bug McCoy had caught seemed to be short lived because a good nights sleep had done a world of good. He'd woken several times during the night but when the start of alpha shift had rolled around, Leonard was feeling much better. He'd been sitting up in bed, having finished his breakfast, and was waiting for Geoff or Alice to appear so that he could ask when he could be released.

McCoy hadn't counted on both of them appearing at once.

_Dammit._

He should have known there was something wrong when Doctor Styron had come for a second vial of blood. Even if one of the nurses had accidentally smashed the first vial, it wasn't cause for the doctor to draw the blood herself. She would have got one of the nurses to do it.

'What's wrong?' He asked as soon as they were close enough. He hoped they would just cut to the chase, one professional to another. Sadly it seemed, that his luck was not with him today.

'We've both double and triple checked the results.' M'Benga started.

McCoy knew the speech. They'd all had to give it at least once in their careers. It was surprising they didn't have a class on 'how to beat around the subject' at the academy. He would have thought there was considering how every doctor seemed to give the exact same speech.

'The blood tests picked it up.' Geoff continued. Thousand's of possibilities whirled around Leonard's head, too many to know where to even start. It was something bad otherwise both of them wouldn't have come to see him. M'Benga's face was unreadable as ever and Styron, whilst certainly emotional, wasn't giving him anything either; the woman was a bleeding heart, crying at everything remotely sad or cute.

'I'm sorry Leonard,' Geoff continued, 'It's Xenopolycythemia.'

_Yes, his luck was certainly drifting somewhere out in space today._


	24. Xenopolycythemia

**24\. Xenopolycythemia**

Summary: Bones was slowly dying. Within a year, he'd most likely be dead.

**Warning: May Contain mild profanity.**

**# Spoilers for TOS episode 'For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky'#**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters. This is purely for personal enjoyment, not profit.**

**Sadly, the end is nigh. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favourited, followed or is just out there reading silently so far. Stay tuned for the final chapter. As always, enjoy and please review!**

'It's Xenopolycythemia.'

The diagnosis had hit McCoy like a sledgehammer. He passed through the denial stage of grief first. Geoff and Alice had both made a mistake, that they were wrong but they wouldn't have told him if they hadn't been absolutely sure.

Pieces Leonard had seen but not known were a puzzle tumbled into place. He'd tired easily a lot recently but put it down to being overworked and getting old. Sure he'd gotten sick more than his fair share of illnesses lately but chalked that up to daily exposure to a bunch of idiots who couldn't follow basic quarantine procedures even if they tried. The Doctor had never actually considered that there might actually have been something wrong though.

As far as McCoy knew, there was currently no cure for Xenopolycythemia in all of the federation or any other known civilisations. Still, he'd sent out messages to all his medical contacts none the less hoping that at least one of them might know of a study or research project that could help him. All the replies to his correspondence came back with sympathy for his 'patient' but sadly there was nothing that they could do to help. He'd shut down, wallowing in isolation and depression before finally exploding.

Jim had wanted him to talk about it and wouldn't take no for an answer. McCoy hadn't wanted to talk about it.

Leonard had screamed and shouted. He'd thrown things across the room. Security had been called by one of McCoy's neighbours but Jim just sent them away. He swore until his voice was gone, punched and kicked the walls until he was exhausted and his hands were bruised and bloody. He was angry at everything, at the whole unfairness of it all.

Finally had come acceptance as McCoy had come to terms with the fact that he was dying.

It had been a surprise when, a week after sending the original letter, the message had come in, just a little over the time it took for a communications signal to reach new Vulcan and back. The response had been simple, just a single set of coordinates accompanied by no additional information.

The older Spock had long ago taken a vow never to interfere in the development of their timeline. The cryptic message gave them little to go by but neither McCoy, Spock nor Jim could think of a reason why he would change that now unless it was important.

It had taken several days to get permission from Starfleet to divert from their current course. It had taken several more after that to reach the coordinates sent to them. There they had found a ship with a database containing vast amounts of medical knowledge, including what had appeared to be a cure for Xenopolycythemia.

It had taken weeks for Spock, Chapel and McCoy to translate all the information but eventually, they'd synthesised enough of the compound the Fabrini had used to treat the condition. Even after reading the literature several times, Leonard only understood half of the way the compound worked.

Xenopolycythemia was both genetic and viral. You had to have both the faulty gene and catch the virus that turned it on. Long after the virus was gone, the damage it had done remained. From what McCoy could tell, the Fabrini compound worked a little like old-fashioned Chemotherapy. It destroyed the affected bone marrow before correcting the faulty genes and initiating rapid cellular replication to replace the marrow.

Every tests and simulations they'd run confirmed that it should work; now all that was left to do was try it on a real patient.

'Are you sure that you want to do this, Bones?' Jim asked. 'Everything Spock's told me says this isn't going to be pleasant.'

The treatment was gruelling. Twenty nine hyposprays that had to be administered at intervals of precisely eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Once they started there could be no going back. Spock's calculated the entire treatment would take a little under six hours to complete.

What other choice did he have? McCoy was slowly dying. His body was producing too many red blood cells, not leaving a lot of room for much else, such as white blood cells to fight off germs. It was why he'd caught so many infections in the last couple of months.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as just removing the excess red blood cells, his body would just produce more to replace them. Without treatment, his blood would get thick putting him at risk of a heart attack or stroke. That was if he didn't die on an infection first.

Within a year, McCoy would most likely be dead.

He would be lying if he said he wasn't having second thoughts.

There was a chance that the treatment wouldn't work. The side effects could leave him crippled. He could end up brain damaged. There was even a chance that it could kill him. It hadn't been tested on humans before, but McCoy doubted Ambassador Spock would have sent them the coordinated just to give them false hope.

Chapel had all of the hyposprays there, neatly laid out and ready. It would be cowardice to just roll over and wait for death to take him without even trying to survive. McCoy took a deep breath before he could change his mind and chicken out, 'Just get on with it, Dammit.'

Christine injected the first dose as Spock set the timer. The drug felt like acid, burning through his veins. The dose was tiny but that was no comfort. McCoy wanted to scream but was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop. His hands bunched in the blanket, gritting his teeth against the pain.

_ One down, twenty eight to go._

If this was what it was going to be like the entire time, McCoy didn't know if he was going to be able to do it. It was too late to turn back now though. Stopping the treatment would kill him.

'Insult me, Doctor.' Spock's suggestion was surprising enough to momentarily break Leonard out. 'Humans frequently find relief from emotional outbursts. Perhaps it may help.'

'Dammit, you green-blooded hobgoblin...'

Once McCoy started, that was it, like opening the floodgates. He insulted Spock, Jim, Starfleet, his ex-wife and everything else within the universe he could think of until his voice was hoarse. The injection's still hurt, but the action helped, even if only to take his mind off the pain he was in; The literature they'd translated hadn't been exaggerating when it said the treatment was extremely painful for the patient.

After the fifth injection, he fell silent. Spock had asked him if he was alright, informing him that he'd gone pale. McCoy, afraid to open his mouth too far, had quietly asked for something to throw up in.

Jim stayed the entire time, even after Leonard missed the bowl and vomited into his friend's lap. Even though during following one injection McCoy had squeezed Jim's hand so tightly, he'd broken one of the bones.

Pain was Leonard's constant companion, alternating between waves of pain and extreme pain, never going away. Somewhere after the tenth dose he lost count of how many hyposprays, lost in the world of pain. It was never ending.

They were about halfway through when McCoy started having trouble breathing. His breath came in short ragged gasps as the pain crushed his chest. Constricting around his trunk and forcing air out of his lungs. More burning as his cells struggled for oxygen. It felt like he was suffocating.

Christine had been ready as soon as the monitor bonged, supplying oxygen and encouraging words to help him breathe through it. It wasn't that he wasn't getting enough air, just that his body was getting used to coping with less oxygen from the reduced number of red blood cells in his blood.

McCoy lost track of time, fighting to breathe and consumed by the torture of the compound corroding away his organs. Leonard twisted around on the biobed, desperate for any relief but finding none. It felt like an eternity.

Jim talked to him through it all but Leonard didn't hear a word he said. The pain consumed him, burning him alive in a never ending agony. He wanted to pass out but every time he was brought back by the latest injection, adding fuel to the fire that raged through his veins.

Gradually, the line of waiting hyposprays grew shorter and the pile of discarded ones grew bigger and bigger. The fire grew duller, burning less fiercely with each passing injection. The pain slowly faded to a dull roar in the background.

Finally there was only one hypospray left. As soon as she'd finished injecting the final dose, Chapel's eyes were on the biobed monitor. Spock was fixated on his Tricorder. Even Jim stopped talking to McCoy to watch.

Watching and waiting, to see if the treatment had worked.

His muscles ached from being tensed for so long. He was exhausted and his head hurt but it was a different kind of pain; The non-stop burning was finally disappearing, leaving McCoy with just the headache.

Spock and Christine were telling him that both his red blood cells and white blood cells were returning to acceptable levels. It took a moment for the meaning to settle in but for the first time in weeks, he could properly relax.

It would take more testing over the next couple of months to be sure but for now, his blood was showing no signs of Xenopolycythemia. They had done it.


	25. Coconuts and Chickens, an epilogue

**Coconuts and Chickens, an epilogue**

**Sadly, we have come to the end of this story. Thank you to everyone who's been with us all the way to the end. I couldn't have done it without you. Enjoy, review, favourite and stay tuned for more stories – Fragments of the looking glass is up.**

'Bones, it was a coconut.' Jim was clearly feeling better than he had ten minutes ago. 'You're overreacting.'

Leonard ignored him as Jim scratched at the hives covering a large proportion of his body. In his opinion, his reaction was totally warranted. It wasn't the first, second or even third time they'd had this conversation about one food source or another. McCoy doubted it would be the last either.

They had avoided complete anaphylaxis this time but Jim was still going to be miserable for the next couple of days as his body rejected the unwelcome fruit. Next time, Jim might not be so lucky.

'How was I supposed to know I was allergic?' The Captain whined as Leonard dragged him through the sickbay doors. 'Coconut's aren't technically a nut.'

McCoy unceremoniously dumped the Captain on the first biobed they reached before consulting the biobed monitor. The monitor just confirmed what McCoy already knew; Thanks to the rash and scans, they could safely say that Jim _was allergic_ to coconuts and add it to the every growing epic list of things that did not agree with the Captain, along with peanuts, tree nuts, strawberries and most medications ever created. 'Just because it isn't a nut, doesn't mean you're not allergic'

Jim had protested when McCoy had brought his Medkit on shore leave, adamant that he wasn't going to need it. Now, Leonard was glad he hadn't listened to his friend.

The Doctor had been enjoying the beach. Up until the incident, it hadn't been as bad as he'd thought it was going to be when Jim had picked the place. Leonard had relaxed under the shade of a tree, catching up on his medical journals, while Jim regularly disappeared off to chat up anything female walking close by. McCoy had been in the middle of the third journal, a particularly interesting one on the treatment of prolonged direct exposure to subspace radiation, when Jim had said something about going to get a drink.

_A drink, my ass. Chatting up the hot looking brunette by the bar was more like it._

McCoy had thought nothing of it until Jim had shoved a coconut, with a straw in it, under his nose. To his dismay, he'd looked up to find Jim's own drink half empty and the captain seemingly oblivious to the angry hives already creeping up across his skin.

_Two hours and forty three minutes._

Leonard would have to ask Spock for to be sure but he was pretty sure that Jim had broken his own record regarding the shortest length of time on shore leave before ending up requiring medical assistance.

'Bones, I'm itchy.' Jim whined. With the size of the patches of hives covering the captain's skin, McCoy wasn't surprised. He loaded up a large dose of antihistamines, ignoring Jim's protests as he injected them.

The drugs were quick to take effect, having the added bonus of drowsiness. Within minutes, Jim was snoring on the biobed. McCoy left his sleeping friend and went in search of one of his colleagues.

Sickbay was relatively quiet, so he didn't have to look long. All the biobeds were empty except for a curtain drawn around the one furthest from the door. As Leonard got closer, he could hear two distinctively familiar voices arguing behind the fabric.

'Doctor, your diagnosis must be wrong.' That was the cool logical voice of their first officer. 'I am neither a member of the species Gallus gallus domesticus, nor have I been in recent contact with one.'

McCoy didn't hear what the other voice said, but he recognised it as belonging to Doctor Styron.

'I demand that you remove yourself from my care and find someone more qualified who can provide the correct diagnosis.'

Alice sighed.

'As I have already informed you, Commander, both Doctors McCoy and M'Benga are currently on shore leave.' McCoy could hear the tone in Alice's voice that told him she was seriously losing patience. 'I am the most senior medical officer onboard this ship right now and I stand by my diagnosis.' Doctor Styron was not a shouter. When she was reaching the end of her tether, she got very quiet and slow, forcing you to shut up and concentrate; when she Spoke like that, you listened. Leonard had only seen it happen once and had been thankful that he had not been on the receiving end. He also hoped he never was.

Deciding that it was time to intervene, McCoy stepped in through the curtain. It was fast turning into the age old question of what happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object.

A naturally cheerful person, it took a lot to push Alice Styron over the edge. She was facing away from him, with her hands on her hips, but McCoy knew her lips would be pursed, like she was sucking lemons. Her eyes would be unwaveringly staring at Spock, having taken on an unnaturally cold hue. The stare was enough to send even the hardest Klingons weak at the knees.

Spock was sitting on the biobed, bare from the waist up displaying the vast array of several dozen tiny dark green spots coating every inch of visible skin.

Spock noticed him. 'Doctor Styron, I must once again inform you that you are wrong. Unless my symptoms have progressed into visual hallucinations, Doctor McCoy is indeed onboard this ship, contrary to your previous statement.'

The Tricorder just confirmed the diagnosis McCoy had come to the moment he had seen the first officer. It was also the exact same diagnosis that he concluded Alice had come to and Spock was so adamantly denying. 'Spock, you have been infected with the Varicella Zoster Virus.'

Spock gave his colleague a look that was the closest Leonard had ever seen a Vulcan come to gloating. 'See, Doctor Styron, you were wrong.'

McCoy resisted the urge to groan. Sometimes, Spock's logic was welcome, then there were times when it was not. It was just like how sometimes the Vulcan was the easiest patient to treat onboard and then something like this happened. The Vulcan had put two and two together and come up with three. 'On earth, the infection is more commonly known as Chicken Pox.'

Spock frowned. 'The name is most illogical.'

'Some people believe the name may have originated from the way the spots look like chicken pecks, but it's a human disease, Spock, since when have we humans ever been logical?' McCoy asked, sighing. This was not how he had intended to spent his shore leave. 'Now, I suggest that you apologise to Doctor Styron before she decides against releasing you to your quarters and puts you in an isolation room with Jim for the duration of your quarantine.'

Leonard knew for a fact that Jim had had chickenpox, having given the vaccine to him personally and then having had to share a room with him when Jim had both reacted to the vaccines carrier substance and developed chicken pox anyway. What amazed McCoy though, was how Spock had managed to not only avoid the vaccine but also spend so much time around humans and not catch it before. Spock had most likely convinced the doctor that since he was Vulcan and 'Vulcans do not get sick', he didn't need the vaccine. _Damn copper-based blood and flawed Vulcan logic._

Spock was busily inspecting the spots on his arms and chest, undoubtedly trying to assess the logic in McCoy's statement. The disease was still in it's early stages; nearly all the spots had yet to start blistering. If Spock was being difficult now, it was only going to get worse over the next couple of hours as the disease progressed.

McCoy made a note to get Alice and Christine spa tickets down on the surface as an apology. Styron had recently completed her research project whilst Chapel had finally graduated and was now a fully qualified Starfleet Doctor. To celebrate, he and M'Benga had left the pair to run sickbay on their own for a week while two most senior doctors enjoyed their own much overdue shore leave. He'd expected sickbay to be quiet during the first week; if he'd known that Spock or Jim were going to end up within its doors, he would never have inflicted them upon his colleagues.

'Doctor Styron, I regret my previous accusation. I did not mean for my flawed logic to cause offence.' Spock said almost absent mindedly, running his hands across the spots on his cheek. 'May I please have a mirror?'

McCoy retrieved a small hand held mirror left on the nurses station. It was often used to reassure patients following facial injuries. He handed it to Spock.

Spock held I up to his face, eying the spots on his face to ascertain the truth in McCoy's suggestion. After several minutes, he seemed satisfied and set the mirror down on the table. As he was moving away, his arm caught the mirror, balancing slightly over the edge of the table.

The mirror toppled to the floor and shattered against the floor.

'Doctor McCoy, I'm sorry, I did not mean for the...'

Leonard held up a hand to silence him.

_Seven years bad Luck. _

McCoy was about to say it but then thought better of it. He didn't intend to waste any more of his time off debating the logic of human superstitions with Spock. 'It's fine, I'll get one of the nurses to clean it up.'

The glass crunched underfoot as Leonard retreated to his office. Spock would shortly be released to his quarters and Jim would most likely be sleeping of the hypospray and reaction until the next day. Until then, he was at his liberty to enjoy what was left of his shore leave.

McCoy retrieved the bottle of bourbon from the bottom of his desk, one which Jim had bought him for Christmas, and poured himself a glass. In the peace and quiet of his office, McCoy smiled to himself as he leant back in his chair, stuck his feet up on the desk and silently toasted.

_To better luck in the future._


End file.
